Environment Canada confirms tornado touched down in N.B.

Above: Residents of Cambridge-Narrows, N.B. think a tornado touched down in the community Saturday and have the damage to prove it. Laura Brown reports.

CAMBRIDGE-NARROWS, N.B. – After two days of investigation, Environment Canada is finally able to say a tornado touched down in Cambridge-Narrows, N.B.

“The damage that we’re seeing here today, and in combination with the video that we saw on the internet, It’s pretty clear this area was hit by a tornado on Saturday,” said Bob Robichaud, a Warning Preparedness Meteorologist with Environment Canada.

An amateur video, capturing the tornado touching down, was widely circulated on social media.

The twister whipped through the Grand Lake-area Saturday evening.

Robichaud said it could have been a tornado, coupled with a “micro-burst.”

“A microburst is essentially a very strong down draft from a thunderstorm and we can’t rule out there may have been one here. But, you can have a down burst and a tornado in the same storm,” he explained.

Robichaud and his team are now investigating the damage to see how big the tornado was.

He says there are usually one or two tornados in the province every summer.

Read more: History of tornadoes in Atlantic Canada

As for area residents, they’re still getting over the shock.

Harold Jones suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage. Three buildings on his property, plus trucks and equipment, were all in the path of the storm.

“I saw it right over there in the field, and it was high and it was roaring just like a freight train,” he said.

Jones said he has heard from friends that pieces of his roof ended up on the other side of the lake, a couple of kilometres away.