A landspout was spotted in the southeast over the weekend, touching down near Glen Ewen and providing quite the sight for residents.
While similar looking to tornadoes, landspouts tend to be weaker, though they still can be damaging.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Brian Proctor lays out the details of what a landspout is.
"It's a little sort of rotation in the atmosphere. They tend to start at low levels or near the surface and then are captured by a sort of cloud drifting through a lot. So it's not like a tornado in terms of a rotating mesocyclone at mid-levels in the atmosphere that then redevelops down and stretches down to the ground."
"It's more likely a low-level rotation, so almost a dust devil kind of idea, that is then picked up by a little bit of a cumulus or towering cumulus cloud further along and spins up. They tend to be fairly short-lived and they don't tend to do much in the way of damage."
While they aren't as dangerous as tornadoes, Proctor says they are just as capable of causing damage in an area affected.
"We do tend to see maybe landspouts doing some damage to some outlying farm buildings. You know, some weaker structures, things of that nature. Fence lines tend to be a little bit problematic for the sort of land spouts, but they tend to be EF 0 damage kind of idea and they really don't do a whole lot associated with that. So something to be aware of and not to go into but or anything of that nature. But be aware of them, but they tend to be fairly short-lived and fairly nondestructive."
Landspouts are more common than tornadoes and with modern cameras, Environment Canada is seeing a lot more of them.
"They tend to be fairly prevalent, but they tend to do very little damage, so people don't tend to take as much notice of them, if I can put it that way. But in the era of social media, we're definitely getting more reports of landspouts than we used to get in the past."