The southeast got through a funnel cloud warning last night, even as scary systems appeared in the skies over the area and threatened to produce landspout tornadoes. While those landspout variants aren't as fierce as their supercell counterparts, such as the tornadoes that landed near Estevan in June, they can still cause damage.
Crawford Luke, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, talks about what they look for before they send out a funnel cloud warning.
"Basically, what we're kind of looking for is a few things. So one is an unstable air mass with a lot of moisture near the surface. Another thing is kind of like a wind shift or a convergent zone, if you will. At the same time, we see some higher humidity. So some higher dew points along with those temperatures. So that's helping with the moisture in the low levels and also with the unstable air mass."
Luke says the main difference between the threat of a tornado watch and a funnel cloud watch is what type of tornado pops out of the system.
"Normally, with a tornado watch, we're typically thinking of a type of tornado that we call a supercell tornado. That's a different type of tornado compared to a landspout tornado. The supercell tornado is kind of like what we saw back on June 19th when we had that kind of mini outbreak across southern Saskatchewan there. So those were supercell thunderstorms."
Supercell tornadoes usually feature stronger winds and last longer compared to landspout tornadoes. Despite that, Luke maintains that people should watch out, as even weaker tornadoes can pack a punch.
"It's not to say that they can't do damage. We have seen landspout tornadoes do damage in the past. Certainly, even today, if some radar data or some other storm report from a chaser or a spotter came into the office and it was convincing, you could still see a tornado warning be issued for this type of tornado."
"But generally speaking, the chances of a funnel cloud becoming a tornado is less, and then even when they do become tornadoes, generally speaking, they're weaker and they're shorter-lived. Again, it's not to say that we don't have cases where we do get a damaging landspout tornado. It's just overall the threat posed to the public in terms of damaging property or risking life is a lot less compared to a supercell tornado."
The southeast area was relatively spared from last night's system, with Luke laying out some of the areas that saw reports.
"We had the one report that we're aware of near Rocanville. Then we actually had five other reports come in as well. So three of those five came in from Regina, or just kind of around Regina. One came in from Bassoon, and then another one came in from Moose Jaw. So we kind of had a whole bunch of reports in that kind of Regina-Moose Jaw area there."
None of those funnel clouds managed to form tornadoes, with the affected areas also not seeing any damaging hail reports.
Luke reminds residents to seek sturdy shelter in case of a tornado or severe weather, and to report any instances of tornadoes, hail, or damaging winds to Environment and Climate Change Canada.