‘It was terrifying’: A storm destroys barn and flips solar panel as it rips through north of London, Ont.

Extensive damage was seen after a Saturday storm north of London. CTV London's Brent Lale has the details.

Jessie O’Neil was walking out to her hay barn when a storm ripped through north of London.

“It was terrifying, it came out of nowhere,” said O’Neil from a farm on Sixteen Mile Road.

“I went to close the door and next thing you know, I see the pallet swirling through the air off into the field and then I watch the roof of our hay shed fall in front of me.”

On Saturday around 4 p.m. the winds picked up. Those in the path of the storm off Wonderland Road described a train-like sound, and then it got eerily quiet.

Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) surveyed the damage.

“It impacted several areas south and east of Lucan, including this barn here that was unfortunately destroyed by the event,” said Aaron Jaffe, engineering researcher with NTP.

“The roof went, landed` over there on the other side of the property, and the walls and other pieces of the barn collapsed onto the barn that was right beside it. We’ll be looking at all that damage, trying to piece things together, see if we can determine exactly what happened, whether it was a small tornado or maybe a downed burst or a microburst.”

From there, the path of the storm continued east just south of Granton where it took out trees and knocked off a solar panel which had a massive cement base.

“It’s one of the largest solar panels you can get,” said neighbour Jeff Bak.

“It’s a pile of metal attached to a concrete base, and it literally lifted the base up off the ground and tipped it over. They’ve got to weigh tonnes as it’s all concrete. It’s got some rebar inside to hold it in place, but it’s unbelievable what it did.”

Bak feels he’s lucky has his property didn’t suffer any damage. He does have pieces of solar panel in his yard about 100 metres from the base.

“It got as dark as it would at 9 at night and then some really large rain came down.”

He also saw a pickup truck flip into the ditch just a few hundred metres to the west.

“There was a large F-250 and had a 28-foot trailer that it was towing,” added Bak.

“They were completely tipped over in the ditch, both the truck and the trailer. I’m assuming some sort of wind or some sort of downdraft that grabbed them and it’s not a big, side piece along the curbs and down it went.”

As the temperatures warm, it’s becoming prime season for major weather events.

“Early to mid-May is a pretty typical time where you might see like our first big damaging storms like this in Ontario,” said Jaffe.

“Canada hasn’t had its first confirmed tornado yet this year, but I expect that’ll happen soon.”

More photos are available here.