Brandon and area residents may have been inundated with warnings on their phones in regards to tornadoes yesterday night, but Environment and Climate Change Canada has not had any reports of any tornadoes actually touching down.
“There was one report of a funnel cloud at some point in time, in the Turtle Mountain area,” said Terri Lang, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. “But nothing substantive, no pictures, and no reports of any tornadoes touching down.”
According to Lang, you might get a tornado warning even without any touchdown out of an abundance of caution. What Environment Canada looks for primarily is the storm rotating on the radar, though posts from storm chasers on live streams and social media can also help them identify tornadoes.
“Once storms start to rotate, they’re capable of producing tornadoes,” Lang said. “It’s about wanting to air on the side of caution. Once these storms start rotating, the possibility of a tornado coming out is higher, so that’s why they warn people when we see storms rotating on radar.”
Though no tornadoes touched down this time, this summer has already been far busier for tornado activity than the previous several. There have already been eight confirmed tornadoes in Manitoba in 2026.
“It certainly is a more active summer this summer than it has been over the last number of years,” said Lang. “We’re right in the heart of severe weather season so we shouldn’t be surprised when we’re starting to get all these reports and warnings coming at us. We’ve become a little conditioned to having a quieter summer, and now all of a sudden we’re back to a very active summer.”
It may seem like tornado warnings have been more common generally in recent years than at the start of the century, but the number of actual tornadoes hasn’t changed. Thanks to the spread of social media and the proliferation of cell phones, we just tend to hear about tornadoes (and tornado warnings) more often than we used to.
“Technology has come quite a long way, so we’re getting more and more reports of tornadoes and more warnings based on the possibility of tornadoes than we would’ve when we were younger,” Lang explained. “Times are different… There have been studies on trends on the number of tornadoes over the years, and it’s flat. There isn’t a trend up or down, surprisingly.”
Lang added that people shouldn’t lose vigilance just because these tornado warnings turned out not to produce any actual tornadoes, and that people should always be extra cautious during dangerous storms.
