EC confirms tornado just west of Ponoka as town gets back to normal

Environment Canada staff have confirmed a light tornado did touch down just west of Ponoka.

Weather specialists say the EF-0 tornado touched down in an acreage near Highway 2A, leaving damaged trees and construction debris.

Mayor Rick Bonnet said several homes were damaged early Thursday evening during the storm, with a warning that lasted about 90 minutes.

“It was a very small stretch, the cloud looked worse than actually the damage that was done,” said Bonnet.

Environment and Climate Change meteorologist Brian Proctor said the crews will now move closer into the town site to assess the damage further, and they may also fly a drone to look at the length of the damage.

“To help assess the future susceptibility of tornado activity,” he said. “The one thing we really want to emphasize to people is it’s just not tornadoes that are deadly with severe weather.”

“We can see winds as strong as EF-1s, EFS-2s and straight-line wind events from summer severe thunderstorms and that can be just as significant and actually cause more widespread damage that often times tornadoes do.”

It’s an interesting time for the storm to occur as the town’s population has grown heavily due to the Ponoka Stampede this weekend and Canada Day festivities.

“We’ve got a significant amount of trailers and lots of people in town as our town swells from 6,000 to about 20,000 for a few days,” Mayor Bonnet said, adding an emergency operations centre has been set up.

Bonnet added Ponoka often gets severe weather around this time of the year and funnel cloud spotting is common.

“Best thing is everybody keep their eyes to the sky,” he said. “I guess we can all be closet weathermen and make our calls, but at the same time we want to make sure that everybody’s safe.”

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