Environment Canada Details Alberta Tornado Warning After Girouxville Damage
Environment Canada issued an alberta tornado warning after a tornado touched down in northwestern Alberta Monday evening as a supercell thunderstorm moved through the Peace River region. Girouxville resident Riley Connors said the storm damaged his metal roof and smashed his truck window.
Environment Canada meteorologist Janelle Gergely said, "We had a big frontal system move through and in behind that main front we had an area of showers". She said, "On the southern area of showers, a supercell developed and that produced a tornado."
Girouxville damage
Connors said he was driving home from work when the storm arrived. He said he saw a funnel cloud begin to form, then watched the wind intensify.
"I’ve never seen anything like that before," he said. "It just started picking up real bad, like getting super windy. My hat was blowing off and stuff." After he returned home, he said, "It was just a mess. My truck, the window was smashed — bunch of damage on vehicles, bunch of roofs messed up. It was devastating."
Environment Canada reports
Environment Canada received reports of the twister near Girouxville around 8 p.m., then another report came from High Prairie about 90 minutes later. The agency said at least one tornado occurred in the region Monday night.
Environment Canada works with the Northern Tornadoes Project out of Western University to confirm tornado events and document thunderstorm-related wind damage across Canada. Dr. Dave Sills said, "We use it to build tornado risk models and that informs the insurance industry, building codes, that kind of thing. We use it to verify Environment Canada’s tornado warning program. We do tornado warning report cards to see how well the tornado warning system is doing,"
Northern Tornadoes Project
Sills said the project has built its dataset back to 1980 and uses it to study long-term changes in tornado occurrence. That means the damage reports from Girouxville now feed into a national record that can shape warning checks, risk modeling and the next round of damage assessment.
