Alberta's first tornado of the year confirmed near Airdrie

What looked to be a tornado east of Airdrie on Monday has been confirmed as a tornado.

It was located about five minutes east of Airdrie near Range Road 282 and took place around 4:25 p.m.

According to  Alysa Pederson, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada it was a landspout tornado.

"When you get a thunderstorm developing very rapidly, air also rises rapidly, and if there's any sort of spin near the ground, it'll spin upwards and create a landspout tornado."

Airdronian Steve Brundige was the one who saw the tornado while he was working on some farming equipment, he mentioned he didn't see any debris in it.

According to Pederson, they have given this tornado a rating of EF (Enhanced Fujita) zero, which is the weakest when it comes to the EF scale. The scale is used to assign a tornado a 'rating' based on estimated wind speeds and related damage. It is a six-point scale, with zero being the lowest and five being the highest.

"Given that we've received no reports of damage for this event, it was given an EF0 by default, the tornado could have seen wind speeds of up to 135 kilometres per hour."

The pin shows the location of where it took place.

Pederson also mentioned this was the first tornado of the year in Alberta. 

"Landspout tornadoes like this can happen any time of the year, as long as the conditions are right."

Last year the closest tornado to Airdrie was the one on Canada Day near Didsbury, north of Carstairs. The EF rating for the tornado was an EF4. The wind speeds of an EF4 tornado can reach up to 310 kilometres per hour.

The last EF4 tornado in Alberta was the Edmonton tornado back in 1987.

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