Environment Canada confirms tornado touchdown east of Fredericton

For those living earn Grand Lake in New Brunswick, there was little doubt about what tore through the area on Saturday evening, but Environment Canada investigators have now confirmed that a tornado touched down east of Fredericton, right around 7:30 p.m..

The storms that swept through New Brunswick on Saturday were part of the same system that caused widespread damage across southern Ontario and Quebec the day before. Although there were some funnel clouds seen during Friday's weather mayhem, investigators determined that there were no tornado touchdowns in either province. All of the damage, even flipped over cars and trailers, was instead caused by strong gusts from the storms known as 'straight-line winds'.

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However, apparently it was a different story when these storms passed into New Brunswick. It was about 7:30 p.m. that a powerful storm swept through the Grand Lake area, east of Fredericton, carving a damage path between 19 and 24 kilometres long (according to the National Post), and Environment Canada investigators have confirmed that the damage was caused by a tornado touchdown.

"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's Canadian Hurricane Centre, according to Global News.

He also added that it may have been a tornado combined with a microburst.

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

There's no word, as of yet, as to how strong the tornado was.

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Matt Rideout, a resident of the area, told CBC News: "We saw that get lifted about 1,000 feet into the air and blown to pieces. We knew it was pretty serious then. Not a regular windstorm is going to lift a 60 by 40 roof up into the sky 1,000 feet and demolish it."

Rideout's friend, Alex Haché, captured this video of the tornado as it (Warning: Some coarse language used):

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Tornadoes aren't common for New Brunswick, but they happen a few times each year.

Most tornadoes that occur there (and indeed in the rest of Atlantic Canada as well) usually rank up to an F2 on the Fujita scale (which has now been upgraded to the EF — 'Enhanced Fujita' — scale). The strongest tornado in the area was apparently on August 6, 1879, when an estimated F3 tornado touched down in the town of Bouctouche, NB, killing five people, injuring 10 others, and destroying 25 homes.

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