A tornado is confirmed to have touched down in southern Manitoba during a scattered, soggy spring storm, with two other potential funnels still being investigated. Kathy Gyoerick knew a storm was brewing Thursday night near her acreage southeast of Sperling, Man. She secured her animals and property and waited for it to start. However, her brother was set to arrive, so she stepped outside to meet him. That’s when the wind picked up. She looked up to see something forming in the sky. “At first, it looked like a large dust storm in the distance and then it became more dense and darker with obvious rotation on the ground,” Gyoerick told CTV News Winnipeg. She started recording what looked like a tornado. She watched as it dissipated over and over again, only to pick up and form another funnel cloud. “It was nerve-wracking at first, especially with the extremely high winds, but I quickly realized it was moving away from my property, so I was just able to appreciate from a safe distance,” she said. She watched for about five minutes before it broke up for good. ‘A huge line of thunderstorms’ Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) reviewed Gyoerick’s video and confirmed a tornado touched down. “The video does confirm that there was some rotation in the clouds and that there is rotation on the ground as well,” said ECCC warning preparedness meteorologist Danielle Desjardins. This one appears to have been a landspout tornado. According to Desjardins, these sorts of funnels are typically short-lived and produced by weaker storms, as opposed to more classic tornadoes, which are whipped up by supercell thunderstorms. Thursday night’s storm, conjured by a Colorado Low from the United States, fit the bill to produce a waterspout, Desjardins added. “It was a huge line of thunderstorms, as well as some really tiny, tiny thunderstorms that typically produce landspouts.” The main band of precipitation fell in the Red River Valley. The Morden area, for example, recorded about 69 millimetres of rain. Meanwhile, ECCC also received separate tornado sightings from the Gretna and Niverville areas. “There were a few reports of these brief touchdowns yesterday, so we are investigating,” Desjardins said. Back on Gyoerick’s acreage, the storm didn’t do any damage that she knows of. However, she hasn’t been able to get out to survey because the dirt roads around her home were made impassable by the storm’s heavy rain. In the aftermath, she is grateful to have had a brush with such spectacular weather, but only a brush. “This was definitely plenty close enough for comfort! It is always amazing, though, to see Mother Nature at work, reminding us all of her power.”
