Investigators from Environment Canada are in central Alberta on Friday to determine if a severe weather event in Ponoka was indeed a tornado.
The agency issued a tornado warning Thursday evening for Ponoka, north of Red Deer, and Maskwacis, though it was later downgraded to a severe thunderstorm warning.
On Thursday evening, social media lit up with all sorts of images of a massive funnel cloud spotted in the skies over Ponoka.
Some reports indicated that it had even touched down.
To make matters even more dangerous, the wild weather took place while the community was enjoying huge crowds for the annual Ponoka Stampede.
“It was black right,” said Kevin Walcheske. “Top clouds going one direction, bottom clouds going another direction.”
Whatever the storm was, the high winds generated ended up uprooting trees, destroying fences, lifting shingles and even ripping a section of a roof from a home.
Luckily, all the damage was in the north end of the community, away from the Stampede crowds in the south.
Shelley Dedio spotted the storm while on her way home from work, but had no idea of the extensive damage caused to her backyard as a result.
“I’ve got my neighbour’s fence from how many feet away that tried to go through my sunroom.”
So far, Environment Canada has confirmed that there was at least a funnel cloud, but it still isn’t clear if the storm actually touched down.
Nevertheless, it made residents run for shelter, certain that it made landfall.
“I was with my four-year-old.” said Walcheske. “He’s like, ‘Dad we gotta get outta here’ and once it started spiraling I could see the north end of town where it touched down and I could see debris flying around.”
Officials have yet to make a determination, but tell CTV that from the images they’ve seen so far, it could have been a ‘straight line wind event’.
(With files from CTV’s Frazer Snowdon and The Canadian Press)
