A video of a possible tornado seen in B.C.’s Fraser Valley is now being investigated by Environment Canada.
Jenny Reilander posted a video to Instagram on Sunday of what appears to be a tornado forming at Hayward Lake, outside of Mission.
Reilander tells Global News she was standing on the beach by the lake around 3 p.m. and saw a storm moving through the area on the other side, around the Reservoir Trail.
She could see a rotation in the cloud and started filming the changing weather.
“It looked like a tornado but we thought, ‘There aren’t any tornadoes in Mission, it can’t be a tornado,'” Reilander said.
She saw trees blowing around, heard loud cracking and even saw a few trees fall into the lake.
“We could see the trees blowing around but it wasn’t windy where we were,” she said.
Environment Canada says it is classifying the event as a “possible tornado.”
In B.C., Environment Canada uses the classification confirmed “possible tornado” when there is some evidence a tornado occurred but one or more components of evidence are missing so they cannot make an official conclusion.
In this case, there is evidence rotation occurred on the Doppler radar and on video, but they cannot fully conclude it was a tornado without seeing the damage.
Environment Canada considered sending a crew out to view the damage but decided not to since it is in a densely forested area and they don’t know the exact location.
WATCH: Kristi Gordon shows Global News viewers a video of the possible rotation and explains a history of tornadoes on the south coast.
Global News meteorologist Peter Quinlan says there were a few factors at play Sunday when this tornado was seen.
“A cold upper-level, low-pressure system swung over the Lower Mainland at that time and there was instability in the atmosphere as well, which allows air to rise up quickly,” he said.
“Those two factors — along with wind moving in different directions in the vertical column over the area, which is called wind shear — helped cause the rotation in the air to come about and form a tornado.
“As can be seen in the video, there is rotation in the column of air beginning in the clouds and extending down into the trees.”
Reilander said the experience was a scary one but after the tornado passed, the heavy rain stopped and the storm moved through the area.
Seeing a tornado in B.C. and especially in the Lower Mainland is a very rare occurrence.
“The last tornado reported in the Lower Mainland was on March 10, 1991 in Pitt Meadows (192nd and Dewdney),” Quinlan said.
“While Sunday’s tornado was weak, it had the potential to do some damage with winds possibly pushing above 70 km/h in a very small area. Thankfully though, the tornado occurred in an uninhabited area, so damage would have been confined to trees for the most part, but a twister like this could tear roofs off some structures, break branches and push over shallow-rooted trees.”
Environment Canada also reported a tornado sighting in Vancouver on May 1, 1988.
— With files from Kristi Gordon
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