Two campgrounds in ruins. Houses lifted and shifted on their foundations. Thousands of trees felled as if by a giant meteorological axe.

All told, as many as 15 tornadoes may have swept through northern Saskatchewan and Alberta during the Canada Day weekend, new findings from Western’s Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) suggest.

NTP researchers have just returned from the project’s first official road trip, a little more than two weeks after Western announced the project’s expanded scope to track and analyze every twister in the country.

They hopped flights after hearing reports a tornado had hit Cold Lake, Alberta, on June 28 and a campground about 360 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon the following day. There were unconfirmed sightings and damage reports of other twisters nearby.

 

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Image via Western University.