Funnel cloud caught on camera in Manitoba

A cold core funnel cloud was spotted by Lorissa Spence outside her Kleefeld home.

Lorissa Spence was enjoying a rather unordinary Wednesday afternoon at her Kleefeld, Man. home when her 11-year-old daughter Eva spotted something rather extraordinary outside their window.

“I didn’t really know what it was at first. It kind of looked like a funnel cloud,” she told CTV News Winnipeg in a phone interview.

She went out to the deck to get a better look.

Sure enough, a grey, rotating funnel cloud had taken shape a few miles west of their home.

“I opened up my phone and took a look with the zoom camera, and then I could see that, yeah, it was rotating.”

Spence was shocked.

She and her daughter had been at the park an hour earlier, enjoying plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures.

A few clouds had rolled in since, with a little bit of rain and some thunder.

Still, those conditions didn’t seem capable of producing such a dramatic scene, especially in late April.

“We don’t sky watch in the springtime for tornadoes, but we do in the summertime, when the weather has thunderstorms in the forecast, but we weren’t looking for it that day.”

Spence said the funnel didn’t seem too powerful, but still capable of taking a shingle or two off any home unfortunate enough to be in its path.

With that in mind, Spence and her daughter stayed away and watched in awe.

Within minutes, it started losing its shape and disintegrating.

“It was very neat that we actually got to see that,” she said.

The science behind cold core funnel clouds

Environment and Climate Change Manitoba (ECCC) warning preparedness meteorologist Natalie Hasell took a lot at Spence’s photos and video of the cloud in question.

She agrees, it looks like a funnel – a cold core funnel cloud, to be exact.

These formations are not associated with the types of severe thunderstorms that produce more dangerous, powerful tornadoes, she said.

Instead, cold core funnel clouds are typically created when there’s enough general convection and enough pressure to create rotation.

“We had a trough of low pressure across southern Manitoba about this time, so that would be the reason for the general circulation, and we had a frontal structure along that low pressure system, also right around the right place, and that resulted in some convection and some non-severe thunderstorms,” Hasell said.

“We had all the ingredients.”

She noted cold core funnel clouds are generally short lived and not terribly powerful.

Still, you should never approach a funnel cloud, even if it looks generally harmless.

“I wouldn’t go running at it,” she said.

Powerful or not, Spence and her daughter were moved by the sighting – their second to date. They got to see a tornado seven years ago in St-Pierre-Jolys.

This one, Spence won’t soon forget.

“Now I’ve seen two in my lifetime and both times, my daughter got to be with me, so that was cool.”