Witching Hour - Dark History: The evening a tornado crossed the river

Witching Hour - Dark History Windsor's deadliest tornado came across the river. On the evening of June 17, 1946, an F4 tornado crossed the Detroit River into Brighton Beach. It killed 17 people, damaged about 400 homes and flipped railway boxcars.

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

Tonight's Witching Hour is not a ghost story. It is a piece of Windsor's dark history, told with respect for the families who lived through it.

The history

Early in the evening of June 17, 1946, a tornado crossed the Detroit River from Michigan and tore into Windsor's Brighton Beach neighbourhood on the west side. It then cut east through Sandwich West Township, now LaSalle, and on toward Tecumseh.

The toll

The tornado killed 17 people. About 400 homes were damaged or destroyed. The Canadian Disaster Database, kept by Public Safety Canada, lists it as a Windsor to Tecumseh tornado. Eighty years on, it is still the third deadliest tornado in Canadian history.

The odd part

The storm was rated F4 on the Fujita scale. It was strong enough to rip railway boxcars off their tracks and flip them onto their sides.

Remembering it

If your family has a story from that evening, we would like to hear it.