Multiple tornado warnings issued for southeast Saskatchewan
3 tornado warnings sent out Thursday afternoon
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) issued several tornado warnings for southeast Saskatchewan late Thursday afternoon, reporting damaging winds, intense rainfall and large hail.
At 4:20 p.m. CST, ECCC issued a tornado warning for Stoughton, Arcola, Lampman, Bienfait, North Portal, Alameda and Oxbow. Shortly before 5 p.m. CST, an emergency alert was issued for the area, warning residents to stay indoors.
Three more tornado warnings were issued over the following 30 minutes, encompassing more than two dozen other communities in the southeast.
Kyle McAulay, a meteorologist with ECCC, said late Thursday afternoon that tornadoes hadn't yet been verified, but that it had heard from several storm chasers in the Estevan area of reports that a tornado had touched down.
He said that a second tornado warning was made for the Regina area several minutes later, also accompanied by reports of tornadoes touching down.
Soon after that a third tornado warning was issued for just south of Saskatoon. There have not been reports of a tornado touching down in that area.
"We definitely want to encourage watching for it at a safe distance. If you do see signs of a funnel cloud or tornado, and a tornado warning in your region, you should be taking shelter in a basement, or in a low area, or in a strong interior of a building with no windows," he said.
Harrison Webster said he saw a tornado touch down a few kilometres southeast of White City.
"We just got home and we got an emergency alert, so didn't really think much of it. My wife said, 'hey, come and look at the tornado.' So we walked out and sure enough there was a funnel cloud southeast of us," he said. "It was kind of less formed when we first looked at it, but it kind of solidified for a bit, got a little stronger, then it dissipated fairly quickly."