There was a brief tornado near Arthur, Ontario Saturday night around 8 p.m.
Dave Patrick of Ontarioweather.com, a seasoned storm chaser, was able to intercept and image the tornado.
“It really got organized within 20 minutes. There was beautiful inflow…the wall cloud started to form and you could see it get tighter and tighter.”
Patrick contacted Environment Canada, who couldn’t see the storm on radar.
“They didn’t see the rotation at all.”
Environment Canada depends on trained weather spotters to identify and report severe weather.
After hearing from Patrick, they finally saw the rotation on radar and immediately issued a tornado warning for the area.
“It touched down briefly…it looked like a little debris,” Patrick said. “It was in a field. It didn’t hit a house that I could see.”
Though the cloud rotation lasted about 20 minutes, Patrick said that the tornado lasted no more than 30 seconds.
“It went down and came back up.”
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