Munoz, Alejandra Betancur and Kenneth A. Anyomi. “Windstorms in Ontario: 1950–2020.” Natural Hazards 122, no. 1 (2026): Article 8.

Abstract

Wind storms are a common disturbance type in North America which drives tree uprooting or snapping. Because windthrow is actually a recurring disturbance type, it shapes ecosystem dynamics, patterns and processes with consequencies for ecosystem carbon. Expansive temporal and spatial data on windthrow is unavailable for Ontario limiting its integration into ecosystem carbon models. The goal of this work is to curate wind storms and windthrow in Ontario from 1950 to 2020 and study their spatio-temporal dynamics. Wind storm data was extracted from news papers, Canada Disaster Database, the Insurance Bureau of Canada and the Northern Tornadoes Project. Using damage descriptors, wind speeds were estimated based on the Enhance Fujita Scale rating. Based on data from the Northern Tornadoes Project that spanned 2017 to 2023, and through non-linear modelling, we modelled the variability in area damaged as a function of wind speed and ecological attributes (ecological zone, region, district). The calibrated model was applied to compute wind storm damage area with the curated wind speed data. The result is a carefuly integrated database comprising of over 630-wind storm events spanning 1950–2020 with fields including the event date, location, type of wind event, wind speed, area damaged, ecozone, ecoregion, ecological district etc. The data shows that the number of wind storms dropped from over 15-events per year in 1950s to below 5-events per year in 1980, stayed stable until 2006 before rising subsequently. Southern Ontario sees the largest count of wind storms, with critical hotspots including St. Thomas, Stratford, and Essex ecological districts. Largest single events were observed in Kincardine and Sudbury ecological districts. This is the first large scale wind storm/windthrow database of Ontario which would allow further development of wind history in Ontario as well as integrating windthrow into ecosystem carbon models.


Publication Information
Author(s):
Dr. Kenneth Anyomi
Publisher or Title:
Publication date:
2026
Category:
Article - Refereed Journal
Related Program:
Biology