The 17 September 1988 weak tornadic storm in Metro Toronto / by Richard Hogue, Paul Joe, Tom Nichols.: En57-61/89-2E-PDF

"During the late afternoon of Saturday 17 September 1988, a weak tornado briefly touched down in the Etobicoke area, just northeast of Toronto's Pearson International Airport. During that day, the development of localized convective activity occured in southern Ontario. Following a few morning thunderstorms in the Georgian Bay area, widely scattered showers formed in the late afternoon. At 2030Z, two cells developed rapidly into small thunderstorms with tops briefly reaching the 8-10 km range. One of them spawned a very weak tornado. Due to their very short life span and limited spacial and vertical extent the duty forecasters dismissed these cells as sources of severe weather. However, the analysis of the Doppler radial velocity data by the mesocyclone detection algorithm identified the potential for severe storms nearly one hour before the event. The use of this information would have significantly altered the nowcasting of this situation. This marginal event was therefore rather unusual because the reflectivity structure of the storm did not provide any classical indication of severity"--Introduction.

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