First, was the tornado outbreak over the United States a couple of weeks ago, and in particular, a F3 tornado that went through Michigan and actually crossed an ice-covered lake where it appears to pull up ice. If you haven’t seen the video, I would highly recommend taking a look.

The second item has been the record-shattering heat over a good chunk of the western and central U.S. I don’t have room to go into all the details, but a heat dome brought record temperatures for March to many locations with some of them seeing temperatures that would have broken April all-time records. With persistent arctic high pressure to our north, these extreme temperatures have been kept south of the border, but southern Minnesota did see a record high of 31 C.

Last on our list is an article that came out indicating that there is a good chance we will see the development of El Nino conditions across the Pacific later this year and it could be a very strong El Nino. We will look at that topic in April.

OK, now on to our main topic.

In our last article we looked at the composition of the atmosphere, breaking it down into a heterosphere and homosphere. Then we looked at the atmosphere from a temperature point of view and proceeded to break it down into four regions or layers — the thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere. We finished off by saying that one of these layers is responsible for most, if not all, of our weather. So, in this issue we will get back on track and extend our understanding of weather and the atmosphere by beginning our look at the atmosphere and surface energy balances.

To begin to understand how solar energy is spent as it reaches the Earth’s surface, and thus understand our surface energy budget, we need to look at the pathways in which solar energy can travel once it reaches the Earth’s surface.

Where the rays go

Earth receives energy from the Sun in the form of shortwave radiation. When this energy is turned into heat, it takes on the form of long-wave radiation. A good portion of both of these types of radiation passes through our atmosphere in the process known as transmission. When we are looking at shortwave radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, we call it insolation, and it is this insolation that is the driving force behind all of our weather.

Insolation is comprised of shortwave radiation that is transmitted directly to the ground, along with diffused or scattered radiation (indirect radiation). As shortwave radiation travels through our atmosphere some of it interacts with gas, dust, pollutants, water droplets and water vapour, changing the direction of the shortwave radiation — or scattering it. This scattering is what causes the sky to be blue during the day and why sunsets and sunrises take on a reddish hue.

The principle behind why we see these colours is known as Rayleigh scattering; named after the English physicist Lord Rayleigh, who came up this principle back in 1881. The principle relates wavelength to the size of the particles that are causing the scattering.

The general rule is: the shorter the wavelength, the greater the scattering; the longer the wavelength, the less the scattering.

Small gas molecules will scatter shorter wavelengths (remember with visible light, blues and violets have the shortest wavelengths, while oranges and reds have the longest wavelengths). So, since short waves are scattered the most and the molecules in our atmosphere scatter short waves, we end up having the lower atmosphere dominated by scattered blue waves.

At sunrise and sunset, the angle of the Sun is such that the insolation has to travel through much more atmosphere than during the day. The short blue wave lengths are still scattered, but now they encounter so much scattering only the longer orange and red wave lengths are left to reach our eyes — so we tend to see these colours.

Action and refraction

Another thing that happens to shortwave radiation as it enters the atmosphere is that it refracts. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes from one medium to the next. In this case, it is passing from the virtual vacuum of space to our dense atmosphere.

We have all seen examples of refraction. Rainbows are created when light passes through dense water drops causing the different wavelengths of light to refract at different rates. Mirages are another example of refraction. Most of us have experienced mirages on warm days along a highway when you stare down the highway and see what appears to be something floating above the road. In this case, it is the hot air above the highway that causes the light to be refracted.

One interesting note about refraction is that without it, the amount of daylight we receive would be about eight minutes less each day. When the sun sets or rises, the light refracts as it passes from space into our atmosphere. This refraction allows us to “see” the Sun when it is actually below the horizon. In the morning we see the sun rise four minutes before it actually moves above the horizon and at sunset we continue to see the Sun for four minutes after it has actually dropped below the horizon.

Next we will take a break from learning about the weather and take a look back at our extended winter to see how the numbers stacked up.

The post Why is the sky blue? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

At least 64 people, including six children, lost their lives in Kentucky after a raft of tornadoes tore through six states.

“We have a 200-mile swath through Kentucky that has pulled-down grain systems, destroyed chicken hatcheries and of course blown-over barns,” said Ryan Quarles, Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner.

The destruction in the Midwest could further raise already high chicken prices and add to supply-chain headaches that have made it difficult for farmers to replace tractor parts.

Poultry is Kentucky’s top agricultural commodity, and at least a dozen chicken barns collapsed, Quarles said. The state is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to properly kill and dispose of chickens housed in barns that were destroyed, he said.

President Joe Biden will visit the state on Wednesday to survey the damage.

One Pilgrim’s Pride chicken hatchery was a total loss, and another is expected to be offline until spring after suffering significant damage, the company said in a statement. It added that other company hatcheries are supplying chickens to farmers near Mayfield, a town of 10,000 that suffered some of the worst damage from the tornadoes.

Pilgrim’s, mostly owned by Brazilian meatpacker JBS, is evaluating damage to a local feedmill, while a production plant is expected to be fully operational on Wednesday, the statement said.

The loss of the hatchery in Mayfield “automatically triggers a multi-month delay in the processing and raising of chickens because the hatchery simply is not there anymore to supply the farmers,” Quarles said.

Mayfield is in Kentucky’s top county for agricultural sales, accounting for six per cent of the state’s total farm business, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, though the state is not a top grain producer. Kentucky held 1.5 per cent of U.S. corn stocks in December 2020, USDA said.

“Lots of farmer elevators damaged. Some small feed mills have damage with indefinite timelines,” said Andrew Jackson, broker at Producers Hedge, in Lancaster, Kentucky.

Mayfield Grain Co., a crop handler, had roofs ripped off of parts of a storage system that holds six million bushels of grain in Mayfield, Quarles said. That’s enough corn to fill two Panamax vessels — each ship the length of two football fields.

Photos on Twitter showed yellow corn visible from the tops of bins that lost their roofs. The company had no immediate comment.

“You have millions of bushels of corn, much of which was just freshly harvested, being exposed to the elements, being damaged,” Quarles said.

“We’re looking for ways to recover spilled grain but also divert the storage and movement of grain to other facilities around the state.”

Quarles said the agriculture department will help farmers find buyers for grain amid reduced demand for feed from livestock and poultry producers who suffered losses.

Hutson Inc., a company that sells Deere equipment, said its flagship store in Mayfield was “destroyed by one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the state.”

Workers “waded through debris and used what equipment they could salvage to assist with rescue efforts at a candle plant located next to us that had mass casualties,” CEO Josh Waggener said in a statement online.

Deere said it is in touch with Waggener and working with Hutson to provide financial assistance to the community.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek, Christopher Walljasper and Mark Weinraub in Chicago.

The post U.S. tornadoes destroy chickens, tractors, silos appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

While eastern parts of the Prairies have only seen a few isolated severe thunderstorms, parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta have already seen their fair share. I think most Canadians were more than impressed, and maybe a little bit proud, about the image of the person mowing their lawn in Alberta as a tornado worked its way across the farmland in the background. Only in Canada!

Just what are tornadoes and how do they form?

A classic definition of a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground, which may or may not be visible as a funnel cloud. For this rotating column of air to be classified as a tornado it must touch the ground.

As to how tornadoes form, the real answer is, we just don’t know.

Tornadoes usually develop from super cell thunderstorms, which are difficult to predict. Even if we were able to accurately predict where and when these thunderstorms would develop, the intense part of the thunderstorm usually only covers an area of a few hundred square kilometres. Within this few hundred square kilometres, the really severe weather may only occur in a small area of maybe 10 to 20 square kilometres. Now, if we look at the size of a tornado, we would find that they range from as small as about 40 metres to as large as two kilometres across, with the average width being around 100 to 200 metres. This means that, as far as weather phenomena are concerned, tornadoes are very small, which makes them very hard to study first hand.

Now, before I go on to look at tornadoes in more detail, let’s first take a look at one of the weakest members of the tornado family, and something we see around Manitoba — the cold air funnel.

All tornadoes develop out of what we refer to as a funnel cloud. In strong thunderstorms, these funnels elongate and may eventually touch the ground to become a tornado, but a funnel cloud all by itself is not considered a tornado.

While a fair bit of research has been done on tornadoes and the storms that produce them, very little research has been done on cold air funnels, therefore, we know very little about them. In general, cold air funnels form in environments where we would not typically expect severe weather to develop. Usually, cold air funnels will form when there is a large pool of cold air aloft that is most often associated with an upper-level low. These conditions provide two critical ingredients that are believed to be necessary for the development of cold air funnels — instability and vorticity.

If you think back to when we talked about instability in the atmosphere, you’ll remember that warm air will rise and cold air will sink. If the atmosphere is unstable you need either really warm air at the surface, or very cold air in the upper atmosphere. This is why there needs to be a pool of cold air aloft for cold air funnels to form because this provides the first ingredient — instability, or rising air.

The second ingredient is vorticity. This simply means spinning air. Areas of low pressure are large areas of spinning air that are too large to form into a funnel cloud or tornado. But within this large area of spinning air, smaller regions get “spun up” creating what meteorologists call a vorticity-rich environment containing lots of little eddies of spinning air.

What scientists believe happens, is that one of these small eddies of spinning air gets caught in an updraft. This updraft then pulls on and elongates the eddy, causing it to contract in width, and, just like a figure skater pulling their arms in during a spin, this causes the rotation to speed up, creating a funnel cloud.

These funnel clouds are generally very weak and short lived, and will rarely become strong enough or last long enough to touch down. If they do touch down, they can then be referred to as tornadoes, but even then they rarely cause much damage, often comparable to that of a very strong dust devil. In fact, when these cold air funnels do touch down they are sometimes referred to as land spouts.

Since the potential exists for cold air funnels to touch down as a tornado, Environment Canada has to issue special weather statements to warn the public about them. Since they rarely touch down — and even when they do they rarely cause damage — such statements will usually urge the public to be watchful for these to occur and to take precautions if necessary, i.e. you don’t have to go diving for the nearest storm shelter if you do see one of them forming.

The post Diving a little deeper into summer weather and tornadoes appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Next up on the severe thunderstorm list is tornadoes!

Before we begin our look at tornadoes though, I think we have to step back a little and discuss how you can know if a storm is capable of producing severe weather, and in particular, tornadoes.

The answer is actually not that easy. The first thing is to listen to Environment Canada for watches and warnings. If a watch is issued by Environment Canada, it means the potential exists for severe thunderstorms, but they have not yet developed in your area. When you hear that there is a watch, you should watch the sky for any development. If any storms do develop they have the potential to become severe.

If Environment Canada issues a warning, this means that a thunderstorm with some or all of the characteristics of a severe storm has developed and has been confirmed by eyewitness or radar. This means you should take precautions immediately. When conditions are favourable for severe thunderstorms and the development of tornadoes, Environment Canada will issue a tornado watch. If a tornado is spotted either by a weather spotter or is indicated on radar, it will issue a tornado warning. Often, by the time a warning is issued, you have very little time to prepare and get yourself to safety.

With all of the technology we have at our disposal nowadays, it is pretty rare to get caught without access to some kind of weather service. But as with most things in life, it is usually when you really need something that it doesn’t work or you don’t have it with you. So if you are out in the field without access to technology, what can you watch out for?

First of all, recognize the conditions: How warm and humid is the air?

Remember, a moist atmosphere means there is a lot of energy available. Look for a dark or threatening sky. And look closely at the area between the storm and the ground — if you can see through it, the storm is likely not severe yet.

A lot of lightning or nearly continuous thunder is a good indication of a severe storm. As the storm approaches, keep an eye out for things like a green sky and mammatus clouds (clouds that look like bag-like sacks that hang beneath a cloud). These conditions usually indicate that the storm contains huge amounts of water and has very strong up- and downdrafts.

Another indication of a severe storm is the roll cloud. These clouds are produced ahead of an approaching storm and are caused by the cooled air flowing out of the storm. They often form a line that quickly races towards you and arrives with a strong gust of wind. Behind these clouds the sky is often a uniform dark colour.

Finally, when you are close to a storm, watch out for any kind of rotation within the storm. This means the storm has become very strong and has the capability of producing a tornado.

The word tornado for most people brings about feelings of awe and a little fear. Unless you have already witnessed a tornado first hand, many who are interested in weather often secretly wish they could safely experience the awesome beauty and power of a tornado — so long as no one gets hurt and no serious property damage takes place. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case with tornadoes.

Worldwide, Canada is second only to the United States in the number of tornadoes occurring each year, with an average of about 70 reported. Southern Ontario experiences the highest number of tornadoes, followed by southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and central Alberta. While these areas report most of Canada’s tornadoes, they have occurred in nearly all regions of the country.

Tornadoes can strike at almost any time of the year but in Canada, tornado season typically runs from April to October, with the peak months being June, July, and August. This differs from the U.S., where tornado season peaks in April and May. This is due to the amount of cold air that is available for severe storm development. In the spring, the southern and central U.S. become quite hot, but cold air is still closely available to help develop thunderstorms.

By midsummer, most of the cold air has retreated well into Canada, putting our region into warm conditions. However, we still have cold air fairly close by to our north to help spawn severe thunderstorms.

Unfortunately, I have run out of space before we really got going on the topic of tornadoes. Next time, we’ll pick up where we left off and discuss just what tornadoes are and how they form. Stay tuned!

The post Tornado season is upon us — here’s what to watch for appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

While Alberta doesn’t see the same number of tornadoes relative to areas to the east and south, the province is still subject to these events. Before we begin our look at tornadoes let’s step back a little bit and discuss how you can know if a storm is capable of producing severe weather.

The answer is actually not that easy. The first thing is to listen to Environment Canada for watches and warnings. If a watch is issued, it means that the potential exists for severe thunderstorms, but they have not yet developed in your area. When you hear that there is a watch you should watch the sky for any development, and if any storms do develop they have the potential to become severe. If Environment Canada issues a warning, this means that a thunderstorm with some or all of the characteristics of a severe storm has developed and has been confirmed by eyewitness or radar. This means you should take precautions immediately.

If you are out in the field without access to a radio what can you watch out for?

First of all, recognize the condition: How warm and humid is the air? Remember, a moist atmosphere means there is a lot of energy available. Look for a dark or threatening sky — and then look closely at the area between the storm and the ground. If you can see through it, the storm is likely not severe yet.

Lots of lightning or nearly continuous thunder is a good indication of a severe storm. As the storm approaches, keep an eye out for things like a green sky and mammatus clouds (clouds that look like bag-like sacks that hang beneath a cloud). These conditions usually indicate that the storm contains huge amounts of water and has very strong up- and downdrafts. Finally, watch out for any kind of rotation within the storm. This means the storm has become very strong and has the capability of producing a tornado.

Worldwide, Canada is second only to the United States in the number of tornadoes occurring each year, with an average of about 70 reported. Southern Ontario experiences the highest number of tornadoes, followed by southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and then central Alberta. While these areas report most of Canada’s tornadoes, they have occurred in nearly all regions of Canada and there is evidence to suggest that tornadoes are underreported in the lesser populated areas of Canada.

Tornadoes can strike at any time of the year, but in Canada, tornado season runs from April to October, with the peak months being June, July and August. This differs from the U.S., where tornadoes peak in April and May. This is due to the amount of cold air that is available for severe storm development. In the spring, the southern and central U.S. have become quite hot, but cold air is still closely available to help develop thunderstorms. By midsummer, most of the cold air has retreated well into Canada, putting our region into warm conditions, however, we still have cold air fairly close by to our north.

As to how tornadoes form, the real answer is, we just don’t know. Tornadoes usually develop from supercell thunderstorms, which are difficult to predict. Even if we were able to accurately predict where and when these thunderstorms would develop, the intense part of the thunderstorm usually only covers an area of a few hundred square kilometres. Within this few hundred square kilometres, the really severe weather may only occur in a small area of maybe 10 to 20 square kilometres.

Now, if we look at the size of a tornado, we would find that they range from as small as about 40 metres to as large as two kilometres across, with the average width being around 100 to 200 metres. This means that, as far as weather phenomena are concerned, tornadoes are very small, which makes them very hard to study first hand.

The best guesses on how they form is that wind shear within the thunderstorm, which is wind blowing at different speeds and/or directions at different heights, creates a horizontal column of rotating air. Then the strong updraft within the supercell thunderstorm pulls and elongates this rotating air causing it to speed up and become vertical. If the rotation becomes strong, and lasts long enough it will eventually elongate to the ground forming a tornado.

Most tornadoes are relatively weak, with about 75 per cent falling within the F0 to F1 range of the F0 to F5 scale of tornado classification. But we do see the occasional strong tornado. In fact, the Edmonton tornado of 1987 was classified as an F4 tornado and at times was estimated to be 1.0 kilometre wide.

While I do enjoy a good thunderstorm now and then, here’s hoping that we don’t see any really severe weather this summer.

The post It’s that time of year when severe summer weather and tornadoes can form appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

I’m not going to try and list them in any particular order, I’ll leave that up to you. I’m simply going to go in chronological order from oldest to newest.

June 30, 1912. Canada’s deadliest tornado hits Regina killing up to 40 people and injuring 300. A quarter of Regina’s population was left homeless after the storm.

June 22, 1922. Multiple tornadoes strike southern Manitoba, killing five people and causing $2 million in damages.

July 5, 1937. Hottest day in Canadian history when the temperature soared to 45 C in Yellowgrass, Sask.

Jan. 30 to Feb. 8, 1947. Massive 10-day blizzard hits the Prairies, burying towns and railways across all three provinces.

Spring 1950. Red River flood in southern Manitoba which, at the time, was described as the greatest flood disaster in Canadian History. Damage costs topped $500 million. It was this flood that prompted the development of the floodway around Winnipeg.

1961. Driest year on record across the Prairies with many places only reporting 45 per cent of average precipitation.

Dec. 15, 1964. Southern Prairies hit by blizzard. Heavy snows, -30 C temperatures, and winds of 90 km/h brought this region to its knees.

March 4, 1966. Winnipeg’s storm of the century brought a one-day snowfall total of 35 centimetres along with winds in the 120 km/h range. Severe drifting closed down the city and much of southern Manitoba for days.

April 17-20 and April 27-29, 1967. Two snowstorms dropped upwards of 175 centimetres of snow on southern Alberta. The army was called in to assist in snow clearing along with the airlifting of food and fuel.

1972. The only year on record where all major reporting stations in Canada reported below-average temperatures.

July 31, 1987. One of Canada’s largest and most intense tornadoes struck Edmonton, killing 27 people and creating a swath of destruction 40 kilometres long and one kilometre wide.

September 1987 to August 1988. $4-billion drought across the southern Prairies. In a drought that rivalled the 1930s, it is estimated as many as 10 per cent of farmers and farm workers left agriculture due to the effects of the drought.

February 1988. Winter Olympics struggle to deal with some of the warmest February temperatures ever recorded across southern Alberta.

Sept. 7, 1991. The most destructive hailstorm in Canadian history hits Calgary over the supper hour. Over a 30-minute period, an intense thunderstorm dropped hailstones of up to 10 centimetres in diameter and caused upwards of $300 million in damages.

July 24, 1996. Hailstones the size of oranges hit both Calgary and Winnipeg causing extensive damage to homes and vehicles.

April to May 1997. The Red River in Winnipeg peaks above 1950 flood levels. While damages across southern Manitoba reached about half a billion dollars, the floodway around Winnipeg was credited with saving the city.

1998. Hottest year in Canadian history with a national temperature that was 2.4 C above the long-term average.

July 14, 2000. 12 people died and 140 were injured when a powerful tornado hit the Green Acres campground southeast of Red Deer.

May to August, 2000. Southern Alberta experienced the worst drought since 1918.

Spring 2003. Record late-spring snows hit much of Alberta with both Edmonton and Calgary topping out at around 100 centimetres of spring snow.

July 11, 2004. 150 millimetres of rain falls on Edmonton in less than an hour, creating some of the worst overland flooding in that province’s history.

Aug. 20, 2004. Early frost hits southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba resulting in over $1 billion in agricultural losses.

June and July 2005. Intense rainstorms create historic summer-level flooding across nearly all of southern and central Manitoba.

June 22, 2007. Canada’s first F5 tornado is reported near Elie, Manitoba.

Summer 2007. Alberta experienced one of the hottest summers on record. Heat and humidity hit southern Manitoba, with Carman breaking the Canadian humidex record with a reading of 53 C on July 25.

July 12, 2010. Calgary records a 30-minute hailstorm that resulted in over $400 million in damage.

March 2012. Record heat hits Manitoba and Eastern Canada. All-time March records were broken across all of southern and central Manitoba. Overnight lows on a couple of nights were near the daytime recorded highs.

June 2013. “Super flood” hits southern Alberta. Late snowmelt and unusually heavy rains combined to bring record-breaking flooding. Costs from the flood exceeded $6 billion, making it Canada’s most expensive disaster.

Winter 2013-14. Coldest winter in over a century across much of the eastern Prairies.

The post When Mother Nature goes to extremes, the consequences are massive appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

A classic definition of a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground, which may or may not be visible as a funnel cloud. For this rotating column of air to be classified as a tornado, it must touch the ground.

• More with Daniel Bezte on the Alberta Farmer: Spot the warning signs of a tornado

As to how tornadoes form, the real answer is: We just don’t know.

Tornadoes usually develop from supercell thunderstorms, but these are difficult to predict. Even if we were able to accurately predict where and when these thunderstorms would develop, the intense part of the thunderstorm usually only covers an area of a few hundred square kilometres. Within this few hundred square kilometres, the really severe weather may only occur in a small area of maybe 10 to 20 square kilometres. Now, if we look at the size of a tornado, we would find that they range from as small as about 40 metres to as large as two kilometres across, with the average width being around 100 to 200 metres. This means that, as far as weather phenomena are concerned, tornadoes are very small, which makes them difficult to study.

Now, before I go on to look at tornadoes in more detail, let’s first take a look at one of the weakest members of the tornado family — the funnel cloud, and in particular, something called a cold-air funnel.

The fundamentals behind the development of these funnel clouds are very similar to how tornadoes get started and will serve as a good starting point for our look at tornadoes.

All tornadoes develop out of what we refer to as a funnel cloud. In strong thunderstorms, these funnels elongate and may eventually touch the ground to become a tornado, but a funnel cloud all by itself is not considered a tornado. While a fair bit of research has been done on tornadoes and the storms that produce them, very little research has been done on cold-air funnels and so we know very little about them.

In general, cold-air funnels form in environments where we would not typically expect severe weather to develop, that is, in hot, muggy, unstable air. Usually, cold-air funnels will form when there is a large pool of cold air aloft that is most often associated with an upper-level low. These conditions provide two critical ingredients that are believed to be necessary for the development of cold-air funnels — instability and vorticity.

If you think back to what you know about instability in the atmosphere, you should remember that warm air will rise and cold air will sink. If the atmosphere is unstable you need either really warm air at the surface, or very cold air in the upper atmosphere. This is why there needs to be a pool of cold air aloft for cold-air funnels to form, because this provides the first ingredient — instability, or rising air.

The second ingredient is vorticity. This simply means spinning air. Areas of low pressure are large areas of spinning air, too large to form into a funnel cloud or tornado. But within this large area of spinning air, smaller regions get ‘spun up’ creating what meteorologists call a vorticity-rich environment, which contain lots of little eddies of spinning air. Scientists believe one of these small eddies of spinning air gets caught in an updraft. This updraft then pulls on and elongates the eddy, causing it to contract in width. And just like a figure skater pulling their arms in during a spin, this causes the rotation to gain momentum, creating a funnel cloud.

These funnel clouds are generally very weak and short lived, and will rarely become strong enough or last long enough to touch down. If they do touch down, they can then be referred to as tornadoes, but even then they rarely cause much damage, often comparable to that of a very strong dust devil. In fact, when these cold-air funnels do touch down they are sometimes referred to as land spouts.

Since the potential exists for cold-air funnels to touch down as a tornado, Environment Canada has to issue special weather statements to warn the public about them. Since they rarely touch down, and even when they do they rarely cause damage, such statements will usually urge the public to be watchful for these to occur and to take precautions if necessary. So you don’t have to go diving for the nearest storm shelter if you do see one of them forming.

We’ll continue our discussion on more severe tornadoes and straight-line winds next time.

The post Severe summer weather. Taking a look at thunderstorms and wind appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

No injuries or major damage was reported, according to a statement by Environment Canada, federal weather forecaster.

“What was just shocking was the duration on the ground, for 2-1/2 to three hours,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada.

Photos on social media showed torn-up asphalt on one Manitoba highway and pooling water in Regina, Saskatchewan.

A large tornado developed near Pierson, Manitoba, on Monday evening, moving north of the town of Virden by late evening, Environment Canada said.

Further west, the storm dumped 78 millimeters (3.1 inches) of rain on Regina, part of a crop-growing area desperate for rain this summer.

The downpour was the wettest July day on record for Regina, the Saskatchewan capital, and included 18 hours of rain, Phillips said.

So much rain alleviates severely dry conditions, but is not an immediate fix, he said.

Near the Canada-U.S. border, Coronach, Saskatchewan, recorded 85 mm (3.3 inches), according to Environment Canada data. Heavy rain largely missed Alberta, where some of the driest farms are located.

Environment Canada warned of further heavy rainfall on Tuesday for parts of southern and central Saskatchewan.

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