Last Year Was a Record-Breaking Tornado Season in Canada, According to Northern Tornadoes Project

The Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), based out of Western University in London, Ontario, has just released their annual report on the 2024 tornado season. In it, the organization highlights that last year was a record-breaking year in terms of the length of the season.

Canada’s first tornado of the year was recorded in Malden Centre, Ontario on March 16th, coincidentally tying a tornado that hit Clifford, Ontario on March 16th, 2016 as the earliest recorded Ontario tornado. There were then a series of several late-season tornadoes that the NTP recorded: three individual twisters in New Brunswick on November 1st and the final tornado of the year near Fergus, Ontario on November 10th.

All told, this makes the 2024 tornado season 240 days long, over a span of nine different months. This is considerably longer than the typical season, which usually only has tornadoes in six separate months, from April to September. At this length, 2024 was the longest tornado season since at least 1980.

Another substantial finding in the report is that the 2024 tornado season was marked by the second-most tornadoes verified by the organization in a single season since their inception in 2017, with 129 tornadoes confirmed nationwide. A large spike in the total number came after the completion of the season, when the team could conduct further investigation and satellite review, which subsequently included an additional 16 tornadoes to the tally!

Most of the year’s tornadoes were rated as weak EF0s and EF1s, but the NTP did record 12 EF2 tornadoes. While this is double the amount from 2023, it is well below the 30+ recorded in both 2021 and 2022, both very active tornado seasons. Of these EF2 tornadoes, all but one (the Wolverton-Ayr tornado in Southern Ontario) occurred in forested areas of Northern Ontario and Quebec.

The Locations of all Tornadoes from 2024 and their corresponding EF-Scale Ratings, Courtesy of the Northern Tornadoes Project.

Geographically, Ontario was the province which was home to the most tornadoes this past season, with 50 tornadoes on land and 10 over water, which makes up almost half of all recorded tornadoes for the year. Out of the 50 tornadoes on land, 14 of them spawned during outbreaks on two individual days: June 29th had six and July 28th had eight. Quebec was the second-most active province, with 21 total tornadoes (four of which occurred over water), followed by Saskatchewan with 19.

At Instant Weather, we are a proud partner of the Northern Tornadoes Project. We developed our custom radar suite, Instant Weather Pro, in conjunction with the organization and the many weather reports from you, our community, help them in their mission.

For the upcoming 2025 season, the Northern Tornadoes Project team sounds excited to continue their work alongside the Northern Hail Project and the newly-founded Northern Mesonet Project. You can learn more about them at the Northern Tornadoes Project homepage and for more information regarding the report, you can find it here.