What made the windsor tornado happen?

Answer 1

There are two well-known tornadoes that can be referred to as the Windsor tornado. The first was an F3 that hit Windsor, Ontario on April 3, 1974, killing 9 people. The second was an EF3 that hit Windsor, Colorado on May 22, 2008, killing 1 person.

The Windsor, Ontario tornado was one of the 148 confirmed tornadoes of the Super Outbreak, the most intense and second largest single-day tornado outbreak on record. The outbreak occurred as a powerful low pressure system that pulled warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico over the eastern portion of North America, and forced a cool, dry air mass from the north into it, forming a cold front. The lift from this cold front caused thunderstorms, fueled by the warm moist air, to develop. Strong wind shear gave many of these thunderstorms powerful rotation that allowed them to spawn tornadoes. One of these storms, which originated over Michigan, produced the tornado that traveled through Windsor, Ontario.

The Windsor, Colorado formed under a somewhat similar setup. A low pressure system developed over the Rockies and moved eastward, pushing a mass of dry, mountain air into warm, moist air, forming a dry line. The dry line acted much like a cold front, generating the lift necessary to form thunderstorms. This spawned a series of tornadoes starting on May 22. The windsor tornado itself formed in unusual storm. Instead of traveling northeast as do most supercells in North America, this storm traveled north northwest.