Environment Canada is investigating a possible tornado that blew through B.C.'s Lower Mainland last weekend – a weather event so rare the region's last confirmed sighting was in the early 1990s.
Social media video taken Sunday afternoon shows the suspected twister forming in the area of Hayward Lake, a popular recreation spot located just north of Mission and about 50 kilometres east of Vancouver.
"Crazy storm just passed," Instagram user Missionbcistheplacetobe wrote. "Lots of trees falling across at the reservoir trail."
Environment Canada has since confirmed its radar picked up cloud rotation in the area that suggests there might have been a low-level twister. The weather agency said it can only confidently classify the event as a "possible tornado," however.
Meteorologist Matt MacDonald noted that the swirling clouds captured in the video never appear to touch land.
"To confirm an actual tornado you need for that funnel cloud to make contact," he told CTV News. "You're looking at the beginning of perhaps a tornado – there's definitely some rotation that's evident in the cloud mass."
The last reported tornadoes in the Lower Mainland were recorded in March 1991 near Pitt Meadows and in May 1988 near Coquitlam, according to Environment Canada's records.
Tornadoes are less rare when considering the whole of B.C., which has had four confirmed sightings since 2001, including a July 2016 supercell tornado outside Quesnel.
Most are categorized at the bottom of the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures tornado intensity, as EF0, meaning the winds were gusting between 105 km/h and 137 km/h and would only be expected to cause minor damage.
Back in 2003, a stronger tornado in Quesnel registered as an EF2, which are defined by winds of 178 km/h to 217 km/h.
"That's when we'll start to see roofs torn off some houses and whatnot," MacDonald said.
Tornadoes along the coast are rarer than in the B.C. Interior because it’s generally cooler, Environment Canada said, and heat is one of the key ingredients for the kinds of thunderstorms that spawn twisters.
The possible tornado recorded near Mission on Sunday would have been the result of the stormy weather conditions that soaked much of the region over the weekend, MacDonald said.
"We had this upper low that was parked over the South Coast for the whole weekend pretty much that gave rise to really intense thunderstorms that were really slow moving," he said.
