Screenshot of a tornado video by Nick Koch

By Lara Fominoff

Thursday's tornado warnings

UPDATED: Environment Canada confirms one or more tornados touched down in southern Alberta Thursday

Jul 19, 2019 | 12:39 PM

LOMOND, AB – UDPATE: Environment Canada has confirmed an EF-1 rated Tornado touched down approximately 17 km east of Carmangay around 5:20 p.m. Estimated wind speeds were between 135 -175 km/hr.

A garage/shop was completely destroyed, a bale stacker was tossed about 200 m, and a large tree branch was impaled in the wall of a home.

The Town of Vauxhall experienced windspeeds of 104 km/hr and walnut sized hail was also reported near Carmangay. A team of meteorologists is still working on gathering more information.

Anyone with videos, pictures or information is asked to contact Environment Canada by email at abstorm@canada.ca or call 1-800-239-0484.

A video posted on social media by Nick Koch late Thursday afternoon, shows a nearly black sky and a large tornado ripping a path across a field.

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Since it was posted, that video has been shared nearly 700 times and watched more than 33,000 times. As Koch is video taping the twister, he can be heard saying, “well, if I wasn’t seeing it with my own freaking eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Around 5 p.m. Thursday, July 18, the Alberta Emergency Alert system sent out critical alerts for the Vulcan, Lomond, Enchant, Picture Butte, County of Lethbridge and Lethbridge areas warning that one or more tornados had touched down. The warnings were downgraded about an hour later.

Environment Canada’s Dan Kulak confirmed to Lethbridge News Now that at least one tornado touched down in the Lomond/Enchant area, and there also may have been another in the Carmangay area around the same time. The following picture is also a screen shot of a video posted to Facebook by Derek Corey.

Screenshot of Carmangay tornado posted by Derek Corey

“We’re getting a number of pictures with times associated with them that are kind of scattered around. We’re still trying to figure out if this may have been one storm, or more than one storm that’s contributing to the pictures.”

He says there have also been reports of damage that they’re trying to assess, so they can put a value to the Tornado(s).

“We’re getting reports of some damages with buildings having significant damage. We’re still following up with some of this information, so we don’t have a damage rating yet, but it certainly does look like a tornado did go through at least part of the area there.”

Kulak adds that it wasn’t only southern Alberta that experienced severe weather events Thursday. There are also reports that one or more vehicles had been struck by lightening in the Ponoka area, north of Red Deer.

Lethbridge News NOW will update this story to reflect new information once Environment Canada releases its weather summary. That is expected to occur sometime Friday afternoon.