Environment Canada investigating possible tornado

May have touched down in Outaouais

After issuing a tornado warning Monday evening for western Quebec, Environment Canada will investigate whether or not a twister actually touched down in the province.

The severe thunderstorms that swept through the province, leaving thousands without electricity, had all the ingredients for the formation of a twister according to Steve Boily, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.

He said rotational clouds observed on the agency’s weather radar prompted the agency to issue a tornado warning for western Quebec, particularly the Outaouais region where a twister may have touched down.

The bright orange warning flashed across television screens at 9:20 p.m. Monday. It warned of “damaging winds, large hail and locally intense rainfall.”

Boily said that Environment Canada has a team that will analyze damage and interview witnesses to investigate if a tornado did in fact touch down. They will collect evidence and may even travel to the region to look for evidence of either a strong wind storm or a fullfledged tornado.

Quebec sees on average about 10 reported tornadoes per year but Boily said that number is always up for debate. Some experts think that many more tornadoes sweep through remote areas of the province and aren’t recorded.

Elsewhere, a microburst in Rigaud felled several 100-year-old trees and damaged houses Monday. Boily said that while a tornado is more impressive to look at, a microburst can cause as much damage.

Microbursts are powerful, focused, downward explosions of air that can occur during particularly severe thunderstorms. Boily said that given the weather conditions on Monday, it’s lucky there were not even more downed trees and power lines across the province.

“We’re happy there wasn’t more damage, that there weren’t any deaths, because the ingredients were there to have huge storms,” Boily said. “We did have some big ones and we’re going to investigate a bit everywhere but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”

Boily said that people should keep an eye on the Environment Canada site at weather.gc.ca to track dangerous weather.

He said anyone can measure how far away a storm is by counting the number of seconds it takes to hear a clap of thunder after seeing a flash of lightning. If it’s less than 10 seconds, the storm is closer than 30 kilometres away and is likely dangerous.