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The tornado count from this past weekend continues to climb, with eight confirmed in Saskatchewan so far.
The Northern Tornadoes Project said a pair of tornadoes touched down from a single storm on Saturday night near Glaslyn, north of North Battleford.
The organization said six tornadoes have been officially confirmed from Friday night. That number includes one in Dundurn, south of Saskatoon, and east of Saskatoon in Plunkett. Northeast of Regina, tornadoes have also been confirmed in Cupar, Leross and two in Herzel.
Read more:
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- Waldheim tornado leaves uprooted trees, damaged homes and businesses
In a social media post, the NTP team shared it is also looking into damage from storms on Friday north of Saskatoon near Waldheim and Rosthern, as well as east of North Battleford near Speers.
Environment Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said it looks like there were upwards of 15 tornadoes between Friday and Saturday, but they’re still trying to confirm a final tally.
“The Northern Tornado Project is out there trying to classify everything, look at all the damage, and classify whether it’s a tornado or not, and if it was, what the strengths of the winds were and giving the tornadoes a rating. So, certainly lots of sites to look at, just because there were so many reports,” Lang said.
Part of that investigation, she said, includes sifting through all the data from tornado reports that came in over the weekend.
“Hundreds of reports, but that doesn’t mean there were hundreds of tornadoes,” Lang clarified. “Just all the reports coming in on social media and all that kind of stuff.”
The storms over the weekend also came with reports of trees cutting through campers, roofs torn off buildings, large hail and power outages.
Lang said this year has been worse for severe weather than previous years.
“It certainly was a busy weekend, and with the past number of years being so dry, it’s been relatively quiet with respect to severe weather,” she explained.
“This year is particularly crazy with the amount of severe weather that we’ve had, and that’s fueled by all the water that we’ve gotten. The crops are in full bloom, so they’re giving off a tremendous amount of moisture. So that’s all coming together to make for a really busy season.”
Lang said southern Saskatchewan was relatively quiet on Sunday night because of how hot it was.
“In cases like that, the heat is so strong that it actually suppresses the storms. We did see some storms go through northern Saskatchewan last night (Sunday), and, of course, it’s hard to get reports from up there, just because the populations are sparse. Plus, trying to get the reports is really difficult.”
She said the next chance Saskatchewan could see severe weather is Wednesday.
“We expect the season to continue to be active, just because there is so much moisture in the ground and the crops are still growing. Often, our severe weather seasons tend to taper off in the middle of August when the crops start to mature and stop giving off that moisture,” Lang said.
