VANCOUVER -- A cloud formation in the skies near Vancouver drew plenty of stares on Tuesday evening, but experts say it was just a funnel cloud and not a tornado.

Video of the weather event that was submitted to CTV News shows a cone shape descending from the clouds somewhere around the city's east side.

"I was under the impression tornadoes were impossible here, but that looks very close to being a tornado," a voice can be heard saying in the background.

Environment Canada meteorologist Armel Castellan said the event was the talk of the town among weather watchers on Tuesday, but that there's no evidence it touched down on the ground or water.

But the funnel cloud, which Castellan said appears to have formed over the Fraser River, still put on an eye-catching show for those who were lucky enough to look up and see what was happening.

"They're pretty exciting because you can see the rotation in the cloud. It's usually quite quick and short-lasting," he said.

"And it's quite rare, even though we do sometimes see funnel clouds in the spring and fall when we have enough of that vertical sheer and an unstable atmosphere."

Fortunately, it was nothing like the kind of destructive tornados that strike in other parts of Canada, including next door in Alberta.

"Even though there could be a dangerous element to this, this is nothing to do with the large supercell storms you'd see in the Prairies and Ontario that would have generated something a lot more problematic," Castellan said.

Tornados do occasionally touch down to the water or ground in British Columbia, including in the Lower Mainland. There have been a handful of such events over the last two decades, including a supercell tornado that formed outside Quesnel in July 2016.

Most are categorized at the bottom of the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures tornado intensity. An EF0 would indicate winds of up to 137 km/h and would only be expected to cause minor damage, if any at all.

Castellan said EF1s are also possible in B.C., but exceedingly rare. Even those wouldn't cause the kind of cinematic destruction that you see in the movies.

"There can be flipped picnic tables and maybe shingles missing on a building, but generally it won't tear off a roof or pick up a cow or these things we associate with much stronger and more dangerous cellular tornados," he added.

Environment Canada is always interested in seeing pictures and video of extreme or rare weather events, and Castellan encouraged people to share them on Twitter if they have any, including of Tuesday night's funnel cloud.

"It's always fun to get some evidence of it and dissect it in as many ways as we can," he said.