Eight tornadoes confirmed to have touched down during June 19 ‘outbreak’

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has confirmed that all eight “likely” tornadoes reported in Saskatchewan on June 19 did touch down.

About a week ago, the weather office confirmed four of the tornadoes, and on Monday, ECCC meteorologist Crawford Luke confirmed the other four.

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“That day I would describe as memorable, but we do see events like that every so often. I think the last time we saw an event like that was in 2022. It seems like every few years or so we get a big day like that, where you get a bunch of tornadoes,” Luke said.

Saskatchewan also saw funnel clouds in parts of the province this weekend.

Luke said they are looking into eight reports of funnel cloud reports from the Humboldt and Saskatoon areas on Saturday, but none have been confirmed to be tornadoes.

“What we have is a bunch of photos of funnel clouds. Some of them look like they could be tornadoes, but it’s just hard to say because we don’t have any photo or video that shows them in contact with the ground right now, and we’re also not aware of any damage reports,” he said.

“That’s good news, but at the same time, it makes it hard for us to discern whether or not the funnel clouds actually did reach the ground or not.”

Luke said funnel clouds are quite common.

“We see this quite a bit in the Prairies in the summertime when we get these upper low pressures that hang around sometimes, and you can get days like Saturday where there’s just funnel cloud reports coming in from left, right and centre,” he said.

“In most cases, those funnel clouds don’t become tornadoes. It’s kind of a different type of storm that we had Saturday versus … on June 19.”

Luke said they are still investigating how strong the June 19 tornadoes were.

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