astronomy

Northern Tornadoes Project

Northern Tornadoes Project is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Northern Tornadoes Project rather than just read about it. In short: The Northern Tornadoes Project is a research initiative at the University of Western Ontario that focuses on tornadoes and other severe convective storm-related wind phenomena in Canada. It was founded in 2017 by Greg Kopp and David Sills, with the financial support of Toronto-based social impact fund ImpactWX.

Key takeaways

Northern Tornadoes Project belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Northern Tornadoes Project to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Northern Tornadoes Project from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Northern Tornadoes Project is a research initiative at the University of Western Ontario that focuses on tornadoes and other severe convective storm-related wind phenomena in Canada. It was founded in 2017 by Greg Kopp and David Sills, with the financial support of Toronto-based social impact fund ImpactWX.

Background The Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) was launched in 2017 to improve the detection, assessment and documentation of tornadoes in Canada, particularly for the vast, non-urban regions of the country with low population density, and ultimately determine the true tornado climatology of the country. While piloted aircraft were used initially to identify areas of wind-related damage in forested areas of Ontario and Quebec, high-resolution satellite imagery (nominal resolution 3 m) available on a near-daily basis became a key dataset, allowing the documentation of many tornadoes in Canada's northern forested areas that would otherwise not be identified. An early success was documenting Quebec's largest tornado outbreak on record in 2017 (17 on June 18). However, this record was tied the very next year (17 on September 5). These were among the largest tornado outbreaks ever recorded in Canada. The NTP's scope was increased in 2019 to include all tornadoes and other thunderstorm-related damaging wind events (e.g., downbursts) across Canada, with Sills becoming director and Kopp serving as the ImpactWX Chair in Severe Storm Engineering. Kopp and Sills went on to co-found the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory (CSSL), a partnership between the University of Western Ontario and ImpactWx, in 2024. The work of the NTP, and other projects, continues under the umbrella of the CSSL.

NTP operations and research The NTP team under Sills detects, assesses and documents all Canadian tornadoes, makes tornado data publicly available via an open data portal and dashboards that can be used to map event data. It also conducts research using the collected data, including climatology and trend analysis, techniques to improve tornado detection and wind speed estimation, and tornado warning verification.

NTP-related scientific publications Peer-reviewed journal articles

Sills, D. M. L., G. A. Kopp, L. Elliott, A. Jaffe, E. Sutherland, C. Miller, J. Kunkel, E. Hong, S. Stevenson, and W. Wang, 2020: The Northern Tornadoes Project - uncovering Canada's true tornado climatology. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 101, E2113–E2132, DOI 10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0012.1. Sills, D. M. L., C. S. Durfy, and C. P. E. de Souza, 2022: Are Significant Tornadoes Occurring Later in the Year in Southern Ontario? Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2021GL096483, DOI 10.1029/2021GL096483. Kunkel, J., J. Hanesiak, and D. Sills, 2022: The hunt for missing tornadoes: Using satellite imagery to detect and document historical tornado damage in Canadian forests. J. Applied Meteorology & Climatology, 62, 139–154, DOI 10.1175/JAMC-D-22-0070.1. Ibrahim, I., G. A. Kopp, and D. M. L. Sills, 2023: Retrieval of peak thunderstorm wind velocities using WSR-88D weather radars. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 40, 237–251, DOI 10.1175/JTECH-D-22-0028.1. Ngui, Y. D., M. R. Najafi, C. P. E. de Souza, and D. M. L. Sills, 2023: Probabilistic assessment of concurrent tornado and storm-related flash flood (TORFF) events. Int. J. Climatol., 43, 4231-4247, DOI 10.1002/joc.8084. Stevenson, S. A., C. S. Miller, D. M. L. Sills, G. A. Kopp, D. M. Rhee, and F. T. Lombardo, 2023: Assessment of wind speeds along the damage path of the Alonsa, Manitoba EF4 tornado on 3 August 2018. J. Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics, 238, 105422, DOI 10.1016/j.jweia.2023.105422. Sills, D. M. L and L. Elliott, 2023: Assessment of Tornado Alerting Performance for Canada. Atmos.-Ocean, DOI 10.1080/07055900.2023.2257163. Butt, D. G., A. L. Jaffe, C. S. Miller, G. A. Kopp and D. M. L. Sills, 2024: Automated large-scale tornado treefall detection and directional analysis using machine learning. Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems, DOI 10.1175/AIES-D-23-0062.1. Miller, C. S., G. A. Kopp, D. M. L. Sills and D. G. Butt, 2024: Estimating Wind Speeds in Tornadoes Using Debris Trajectories of Large Compact Objects. Mon. Wea. Rev., 152, 1859–1881, DOI 10.1175/MWR-D-23-0251.1. Butt, D. G., T. A. Newson, C. S. Miller, D. M. L. Sills and G. A. Kopp, 2025: Analysis of forest-based tornadoes using treefall patterns. Mon. Wea. Rev., DOI https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-24-0249.1. Sills, D. M. L., and C. S. Miller, 2025: Multi-level in-situ measurements during a direct hit by a significant tornado. Atmosphere-Ocean, DOI 10.1080/07055900.2025.2554837. Other Scientific Articles

Sills, D., G. A. Kopp, E. Hong, J. Kennell, A. Jaffe, and L. Elliott, 2018: The Northern Tornadoes Project – overview and initial results. Extended Abstracts, 29th AMS Conference on Severe Local Storms, Stowe, VT, Amer. Meteorol. Soc., Paper 60, 1-6. Sills, D., E. Hong, A. Jaffe, S. Stevenson, and G. A. Kopp, 2018: The ‘cross-border’ tornado outbreak of 24 August 2016 – analysis of the two tornadoes in Ontario. Extended Abstracts, 29th AMS Conference on Severe Local Storms, Stowe, VT, Amer. Meteorol. Soc., Paper 180, 1-13. Kopp, G., D. Sills and J. Brimelow, 2024: Canada is witnessing more thunderstorm impacts than ever before. The Conversation - Canada Edition. Academic Journalism Society, Toronto, Canada. DOI 10.64628/AAM.756uj4pn6 Sills, D., and G. Kopp, 2025: It’s challenging to predict extreme thunderstorms — improving this will help reduce their deadly and costly impacts. The Conversation, Academic Journalism Society, DOI 10.64628/AAM.vhrrcxrv6 Sills, D., L. Elliott, D. Michelson and N. Donaldson, 2025: 'Missed' EF2 tornadoes in Canada and the role of radar. Extended Abstracts, 41st AMS Conference on Radar Meteorology, Toronto, ON, Amer. Meteorol. Soc., Paper 6B.4, 10 pp.

NTP in the media The work of the NTP has been featured on TV and radio, newspapers, magazines, and podcasts in Canada and the United States.

References

External links Northern Tornadoes Project Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Northern Tornadoes Project

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Northern Tornadoes Project claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Northern Tornadoes Project before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Northern Tornadoes Project ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Northern Tornadoes Project

In research: Northern Tornadoes Project appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Northern Tornadoes Project in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Northern Tornadoes Project is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2017 establishments in Ontario, Climatological research, Meteorology research and field projects, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Northern Tornadoes Project outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Northern Tornadoes Project in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Northern Tornadoes Project means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Northern Tornadoes Project out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Northern Tornadoes Project in simple terms?

Why does Northern Tornadoes Project matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Northern Tornadoes Project?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Northern Tornadoes Project.