Parts of New Brunswick faced rare tornado warning

Parts of N.B. faced tornado warning For half an hour on Thursday morning, parts of New Brunswick were under a tornado warning.

For about 30 minutes Thursday morning, communities in central New Brunswick were under a rare tornado warning, but given the early hour, it’s not clear how many people even knew about it.

Just a few days ago, Cape Breton was under a tornado watch as well.

The tornado warning in New Brunswick was issued just after 8:30 a.m. Thursday, following very heavy rain.

Sharon Green lives just outside of Stanley, N.B., and says the air felt thick before the rain started falling hard.

“It was muggy, no clouds, the sun also wasn’t out,” says Green.

Another resident of Stanley, N.B., Laura MacFarlane, says, “It was a little bit of an eerie feeling, a bit of a heavy weather feeling.”

MacFarlane owns a local diner and says many were talking about the colour of the sky.

“My son that lives in Boiestown said it was really, really dark this morning,” says MacFarlane.

Bernice MacFarlane first learned of the tornado warning when it flashed on her television screen.

“It was all in red, and there was lettering, and then the voice was also with it,” says Bernice MacFarlane. “It said where to go, what to do in your house, and where to stay away from. I thought, it doesn’t usually happen around here.”

Almost as rare as a tornado warning, is a tornado warning in the morning.

“More than 80 percent of the tornados we get in Canada happen between 4p.m. and 9p.m.,” says CTV Atlantic’s Meteorologist Cindy Day. “Now, the morning occurrence happens when a cold front comes into play. We’ve had an extremely long period of warm air in New Brunswick and a morning cold front popped up at the top of the clouds and climbed to create very intense thunderstorms and tornados.”

Sharon Green used to live in Oklahoma, and says there would be no mistaking if a tornado had touched down near here.

“When a tornado is actually happening, you will hear something that sounds just like a freight train coming through your yard,” says Green.

None of that happened on Thursday, but a reminder that tornado warnings, while rare, do indeed happen in the Maritimes.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore