OXBOW — An EF3 tornado carved a roughly 32-kilometre path through southeast Saskatchewan on Tuesday, leaving damage survey teams to determine whether the destruction was caused by one tornado or several.
Northern Tornadoes Project director Dr. David Sills said they have two damage survey teams in southern Saskatchewan assessing the destruction brought by the EF3 tornado that touched down on Tuesday, June 9, impacting the areas around Oxbow, Alameda and North Portal.
Sills told SaskToday that aside from focusing on the damage assessment from the severe weather system, the teams will also collect more information on the destructive path of the tornado in southeast Saskatchewan, which was the second confirmed this week.
An EF1 tornado struck near Hirsch, 20 minutes east of Oxbow, on Tuesday, June 9, creating a 17-kilometre track of damage along its path, toppling power poles, uprooting trees and destroying grain bins after touching down at around 8:15 p.m.
Sills, during the interview on Thursday, June 11, said Tuesday’s tornado caused roughly 32 kilometres of damage, adding that they are still determining whether it was a single track or several. A single-track tornado is continuous and stays on the ground along a single unbroken path.
“There are various amounts of damage along that track. Sometimes it went through a field, causing extensive damage. There are other places where just trees are damaged. And then there are a couple of places where structures were hit, and so the teams are assessing that right now,” said Sills.
He added that the path of the damage extends from the U.S. border near Portal, N.D., all the way to the Oxbow area.
“We are going over the radar [images] frame by frame to see if there is any evidence that there might have been multiple tornadoes. In fact, there are still some data coming in, and someone sent a video showing the possibility of two tornadoes occurring at the same time,” said Sills.
“We are still receiving data, still analyzing data, still collecting data. It takes a long time to get an accurate picture of what went on, especially with a complex storm system, as we had through the Prairies on June 9.”
He added that it is still hard to say whether Saskatchewan and the Prairie region will see more EF3 systems, since peak tornado activity typically starts in July, which is still more than two weeks away.
“This is just the beginning of the season, and I'm sure there'll be more coming. We've got a lot of the season to get through and probably more tornadic storms, hopefully nothing as strong as an EF3,” said Sills.
Terry Lang, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said they are also continuing their investigation into the two confirmed tornadoes in Saskatchewan, especially the EF3 that hit Oxbow. There have been no tornado reports after the incident.
“This type of pattern is generally not conducive to tornadoes. We do have possibly a funnel cloud, sometimes they do touch down, usually very temporarily, but we haven't had any reports of any,” Lang, who is a Prairie region meteorologist, told SaskToday.
She added that there has been a misunderstanding about how weather systems that produce tornadoes form, such as the one that hit Oxbow.
“It has to do with the moisture in the atmosphere, not necessarily the heavy rain that's falling. It's the moisture that's in the atmosphere, and that can come from evaporating lakes. We get a tremendous amount of moisture from growing crops, some people call it corn sweat,” said Lang.
“We have a term for it, evapotranspiration, which gives big fuel to some of these storms. That, I think, is where the misunderstanding is coming from, that it's this moisture in the atmosphere, as opposed to heavy rain somewhere else that doesn't provide that information.”
