Tornado fells trees after touching down in central Alberta on Wednesday

Madeline Smith · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 03, 2025 6:59 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

A tornado touched down successful cardinal Alberta connected Wednesday, cutting a way done a treed area, but seemingly sparing the country from immoderate much superior damage.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a tornado informing Wednesday day for an country westbound of Drayton Valley.

Storm chaser Trenten Pentelichuk said helium watched the twister touch down adjacent the hamlet of Lodgepole — astir 175 kilometres southwest of Edmonton. He'd been successful the country each afternoon, waiting to spot if the important tempest enactment successful the forecast would really make a tornado.

"Around 4 p.m., things benignant of started taking off," helium said.

"Lots of the storms benignant of went up and past died truly fast, and past we noticed the 1 that did nutrient the tornado blew up ... erstwhile we saw it connected the radar to erstwhile it had the tornado connected the crushed it was astir apt 30, 45 minutes."

Pentelichuk and his tempest chasing spouse kept pursuing the tornado arsenic it died down, past returned to the spot wherever it touched down to survey the harm with a drone.

The tempest toppled immoderate trees, but Pentelichuk said it seemed to person missed immoderate of the adjacent farms.

"It was, I guess, what you'd telephone an perfect spot for a tornado, wherever it can't truly bash excessively overmuch structural harm and cipher gets hurt."

A survey squad from the Northern Tornadoes Project, a probe radical based retired of Western University, confirmed Thursday that a tornado occurred successful the area.

Project manager Dave Sills told CBC News that erstwhile the squad connected tract determines a tornado touched down, they usage the details of the harm to measure its strength.

"Typically what we look for to find if it's a tornado is simply a long, constrictive path," Sills said.

"From what I understand, it's mostly histrion damage that's occurred with this event. So they'll beryllium looking astatine the fig of trees down and implicit what area, and trying to marque an appraisal based connected that."

Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor said the tornado came from a "supercell" thunderstorm, which are communal successful the Prairies, and known to beryllium susceptible of producing tornadoes.

It looks similar the tornado whitethorn person been connected the crushed for astir 15 minutes, but it mightiness not person sustained interaction the full time, Proctor said.

"We person seen what appears to beryllium tornado debris arsenic it went across a treed country extracurricular of a farmer's field, and we're seeing tons of trees laying down successful other directions, which tends to bespeak rotation associated with that."

This is the 4th probable tornado successful Alberta truthful acold this summer, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada— compared to 12 tornadoes adjacent doorway successful Saskatchewan. In aboriginal July, that's already getting adjacent to the yearly mean of 14 to 15 that Saskatchewan typically sees each summer.