‘Water tornado’ spotted in Quebec and eastern Canada

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Marc-Andre Bourgeois-Gaudet was on his boat near the Madeleine Islands on Friday when he saw several funnel clouds descend from the sky like a tornado.

As he got closer, he said, the rain was heavier than any he had ever experienced. “It was like a waterfall falling on my head.”

Western University’s Northern Tornado Project has confirmed that multiple waterspouts, also known as waterspouts, have been seen in Quebec and Nova Scotia in recent days.

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The Madeleine Islands and Inverness, Nova Scotia, both reported weather Another such phenomenon was seen on August 23, and two days later over Lake des Deux Monts near Vaudreuil. Ontario also saw several such events in August, most of which occurred in the Great Lakes region.

David Sears, executive director of the Northern Tornado Project, said a waterspout is simply a tornado that forms over water instead of land.

“A tornado is a rotating column of air that extends from the lower part of a storm cloud to the ground, which can be land or water,” he said.

Waterspouts have been in the news since a superyacht sank in a storm off Sicily last week, killing seven people. Italian civil protection officials said the storm may have triggered a waterspout where the British-flagged Bayesian yacht was moored.

While waterspouts can cause damage if they strike boats directly, Seale said most are far less destructive than those over land. Most have winds between 90 and 130 kilometres per hour — weak by tornado standards — and are rated EF-0, he said.

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Because cooler air over the lake tends to suppress thunderstorm activity, he said, “intense tornadoes forming off the lake are more the exception than the rule.” However, they have happened, including a 2011 waterspout that formed over Lake Huron and later struck Goderich, Ontario, as an F3.

He said waterspouts “can certainly sink ships,” but most are slow-moving and can be avoided.

Bourgeois-Gaudet, of Madeleine Island, said he never really felt in danger during his close encounter with the waterspout. He said while the water was a little choppy, the winds were never strong enough to pose a risk of capsizing the boat. “The hardest part was seeing where I was going” because of the rain.

Sears said his members have documented about 15 waterspouts a year since the tornado project began in 2017. This year, they have documented 18 confirmed or suspected events, which is slightly above average so far this year, he said.

Waterspouts in Quebec have drawn a lot of attention — probably because they are reported less frequently than in the Great Lakes region. Some of Quebec’s waterspouts this year were the first recorded along the St. Lawrence River since 2017, Sears said — but that could just be because more people are seeing and documenting them, often on social media.

“It certainly happens,” he said, adding, “I wouldn’t say it’s rare, it’s just not well documented.”

He said the number of tornadoes recorded in Canada has increased from about 60 per year before 2017 to an average of nearly 100 thanks to improved reporting.

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