Experts confirm twister touched down south of Winnipeg Wednesday

A cloudy sky in the village of Tourond, south of Winnipeg, quickly turned violent Wednesday, marking Manitoba’s first tornado of the year.

“Nothing’s going to happen. We have a super strong basement we can hide in,” says a girl in a video posted to Facebook that showed the tornado.

The landspout tornado hit the community, on Highway 59 just south of Niverville, just after 5 p.m. Wednesday, leaving a small trail of dirt in its path, but causing no damage.

A landspout, which is formed from the ground up, rather than from a rotating updraft within a thunderstorm cloud, generally doesn’t cause a lot of damage.

Natalie Hasell, of Environment and Climate Change Canada, said the tornado wasn’t out of the ordinary. She said conditions were “ripe” for cold core funnel clouds, which can — but often don’t — turn into tornadoes.

“The general conditions around what happened (Wednesday), cold core funnel is very typical under these conditions,” she said. “Occasionally a cold-core funnel will reach the ground.”

Dave Sills, director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ont., said it was an early-season touchdown — only the second twister to ever touch down in Manitoba in the month of April. The first one happened near Altona in 1980.

The project tracks all tornadoes in Canada.

He said the tornado didn’t do any damage, and only kicked up dirt in a field, based on a video sent to the university.

Reeves for De Salaberry and Hanover both said they hadn’t received reports of damage.

Sills said Manitoba averages about 8.5 tornadoes a year, but cautioned the early touchdown isn’t a sign that it will be a busy season.

The university team classified the tornado as EF0-Default on the Enhanced Fujita scale, the lowest possible rating, with help from videos posted to social media. The classification would mean wind speeds were likely low, but still greater than 90 kilometres per hour.

“Any tornado is dangerous, even an EF0 can put a two-by-four through a wall,” said Sills.

He said the rotation of smaller tornadoes can’t be picked up on radar, which makes them difficult to predict.

Hasell said for most people, a funnel cloud that quickly disappears and one that touches down and becomes destructive look the same, and that people should stay safe.

“Unless you’re very sure about the situation, I would prefer that people would stay away and take shelter,” said Hasell.

The strongest tornado in the southeast area of Manitoba happened near St. Malo in 1977. Two people were killed. The tornado was classified as F4 on the former Fujita scale. F4 tornadoes have wind speeds of at least 333 km/h.

The strongest twister in Manitoba history happened in Elie in 2007. It reached F5 on the Fujita scale and had winds of greater than 400 km/h.

The path of destruction was more than 5.5 kilometres long and 300 metres wide. Despite it lifting up cars and houses, nobody was killed. The Elie tornado is the only F5 or EF5 tornado recorded in Canada.

The Tourond tornado was only Canada’s second twister of the year after another one, classified as EF0, touched down near Rolling Hills, Alta. on April 12.

The Northern Tornadoes Project is investigating another potential tornado that happened north of Montreal on April 29. If confirmed, it would make the Tourond tornado the third of the year.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca