(article taken from the St. Catharines Standard, July 27th, 1999, pages A3 and A5)

Thunderstorm or tornado?  You be the judge.

House shuddered, floors vibrated, sounded like a loud train was coming
By Cheryl Clock, Standard Staff


    It sure felt like a tornado to Peter Buis.  And standing in the middle of his backyard, haphazardly strewn with large, fallen tree limbs and a scattering of smaller branches, it sure looks like the aftermath of a tornado, he says.
    "This is the devastation," says Buis, motioning Monday towards his side lawn along the shore of Lake Ontario in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
    "It hit us like a big truck," he says.  "It took all of this down and it as gone."
    In just 30 seconds, high winds that blew in off the lake around 8 p.m. Saturday snapped large limbs and tossed them up to 12 metres away, narrowly missing his house.
    Buis and his wife Margaret watched the storm approach from a second-floor bedroom.
    At first, they were curious when they spotted the unusual storm: a long, white band off in the distance that seemed to hover just above the water.
    But when it came to shore, they realized this was no everyday storm.
    "When it hit the house, I really woke up," says Buis.
    The house shuddered, the floors vibrated, and it sounded as if a loud train was screaming through their yard.
    But before they could reach the safety of their basement, it was over.  "You didn't even have time to be frightened," he says.
    Environment Canada, however, isn't calling it a tornado.  It could have been just a thunderstorm accompanied by severe winds of 100 to 150 kilometres per hour, says meteorologist Mike Leduc.
    The only way of knowing is to send an investigator to the scene, and even then it may not be confirmed.  But no one will be sent out to Niagara, because there are not the resources to look into every report, he says.
    A tornado is a funnel-shaped formation that comes down from the clouds.  Not all leave huge paths of destruction, he says.
    Typically, it rains heavily first, calms, and then the tornado strikes.  Rain and heavy wind at the same time are likely just a thunderstorm, he says.
    As well, a tornado will spew objects in different directions.  Heavy wind will topple trees in the same direction.
    In a thunderstorm, rain could fall so heavily, it looks like a wall of water.
    Whatever it's called, Buis is sure of one thing: "To me, it was scary."
    The storm cut a path across his property, moving south where it pushed down rows of grape vines and snapped peach trees, all the way to East and West Line.
    Monday morning, Buis's son Kevin hopped in a van to survey the damage, travelling to the vineyard he runs with his father and brother along Lakeshore Road.
    Diagonally across the centre is a visible path of toppled vines, about 30 metres wide.  Metal poles supporting the rows are bent and the vines pulled from their wire supports.
    It will take a team of six men the entire day to straighten them, says Kevin Buis.
    Damage to grapes is minimal.  It's more an aggravation since crews should have been picking peaches instead of repairing vineyards.
    "Mother Nature wins all the time," he says with a grin.
    Kevin Ker, a crop management consultant and Brock University teacher, is touring the fields with Buis.
    In 20 years, he's never seen anything like it - such a narrow strip of destruction.
    He's brought along his camera to photograph the damage, to show his students.  "It's left a visible trail behind," he says.
    Coloman Szabo, who works for a neighbouring vineyard, was on a tractor in the middle of a field when the storm hit.
    "I've never seen anything like it," he says.  Rain pelted at him and scraps of wood flew through the air as he scrambled for a pickup truck and headed for cover.
    Across Niagara, there were power outages and reportes of fallen trees.  In Beamsville, there was some hail and isolated flooding as Bartlett Creek overflowed onto King Street.  A drain took care of the excess and there was no damage to buisinesses.
    But despite the few scary moments, the rain was desperately needed, says Adrian Huisman, secretary manager of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board.
    Its benefits far outweight the small amount of crop damage, he says.  Rainfall averaged from about one to four centimetres across Niagara.
    Brian Leydon of the Ontario Grape Growers Marketing Board sums it up simply: "If it had come a little more gently, it would have been greatly appreciated."

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