What the heck was that?

Sunday, for the most part, was a typical rainy summer day...I did say for the most part right? That was not the case for Rob Williams and his family who were spending the weekend at their cottage north of Peterborough on Mississauga Lake. Just check out the pictures sent in from Rob's son Scott below...

Scary! I forwarded these pictures on to Peter Kimbell at Environment Canada as the family was concerned that this may have been a tornado. Peter was kind enough to check some radar imagery from around that time (6:30pm) and it does not look like a tornado was responsible. That is not to say the wind that caused this damage wasn't dangerous. After speaking with Rob for some time today it sounds as though all of the trees downed appeared to fall in generally the same direction. He also told me that some of these trees were quite large and appeared healthy before being blown over. So what caused the damage? It sounds as if this was likely the result of a downburst or microburst that followed a very heavy downpour. A microburst is a very localized column of heavy, sinking air that produces damaging "straight line" winds that can move with great velocity. (Straight line as in no spinning). Tornadoes spin and tend to leave a chatoic mess in their wake with trees falling and landing in various directions. Bursts tend to push trees down in roughly the same direction which is the same kind of damage described by Rob. I'm happy to tell you that this burst resulted in no injuries to cottagers in the area...just some property damage. For a description of what a downburst or microburst is see the video below that i put together a little while ago.