A wave of thunderstorms on June 19 led to an extraordinary display of severe weather across Saskatchewan – which included a total of eight confirmed tornadoes.

Crawford Luke is a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). He says the combination of an unstable air mass and wind sheer created favourable conditions last Thursday for severe thunderstorms and with them – tornadoes.

“We were dealing with supercell thunderstorms … when we think of some really strong tornadoes and really large hail, those are usually supercell thunderstorms,” he explained.

The Northern Tornadoes Project, based out of Western University in Ontario, tracks and records tornado activity across the country and works in collaboration with ECCC.

Thursday, June 19 saw tornadoes reported across the province’s southeast and east central regions.

Three were spotted by residents in the Frobisher and Hirsch areas – east of Estevan. All three events were recorded within a 22-minute period from 4:23 to 4:45 p.m.

Another two tornadoes were reported east of Regina, near Kronau and Vibank at around 5:10 and 5:50 that evening.

The remaining three tornadoes were more spread out in both time and location – the first touching down near Muskowekwan First Nation at 5:05 p.m., near the community of Young in the Little Manitou Lake area at 6:18 p.m. and finally south of Hubbard at 9:10 p.m.

Eight tornadoes touching down in a single province in less than five hours is an uncommon feat, Luke admits, but its not unheard of.

“It’s not something we see everyday but every few years or so it seems we get an event like this – where we see a sort of regional tornado outbreak,” he explained.

According to Luke, the Northern Tornadoes Project is leading verification efforts in terms of damages.

“There was damage with two tornadoes near Frobisher … some of the damage down there consisted of snapped trees, snapped power poles, and some oil tanks that were thrown,” he explained.

Damage to farmyards was also reported in the Kronau and Hubbard areas.

So far this year, there have been 12 tornadoes reported in the province. Saskatchewan boasts the second highest yearly average for tornadoes at 15.

“That’s actually second most of any Canadian province or territory, its only Ontario that averages more tornadoes per year,” Luke added. “Saskatchewan is definitely not a stranger to tornadoes – it is definitely a regular occurrence as part of the summer season.”

While the province is well on its way to matching or surpassing its yearly average – Luke says its impossible to accurately predict what the final total will be.

“Just noticing that we’re at 12 already, the average is 15. We still have a few days left in June, we still have July and August to get through. It seems that, possibly we’re on track for a busier than average summer – but again that number can really be inflated by just one or two sort of ‘big days’ if you will.”

“That’s a really great way to share weather information with our meteorologists and it really helps them out – gives them an idea of what is actually happening on the ground.”