A veteran guide, Laura MacNeil, has been leading coastal expeditions in the Vernon Bridge vicinity of Prince Edward Island for six years. While her usual tours showcase the island’s fossil locations and ancient past, MacNeil’s group encountered an unusual natural spectacle last Saturday morning.
Amidst looming dark clouds in the distance, MacNeil’s group hurried back to avoid an impending downpour. During their return journey, as they passed a cliff’s edge, MacNeil noticed a waterspout in the distance. After its dissipation, a second waterspout emerged farther out, approximately one to two kilometers from the shoreline.
Expressing her excitement, MacNeil shared, “I started honestly freaking out, I thought it was so cool. I was just so excited to see such a cool natural phenomenon. It was all just pure excitement.”
The Northern Tornadoes Project, a research organization monitoring severe weather in Canada, confirmed the occurrence as a tornado, classified as a waterspout due to its formation over water. Designated as an “EF0-Default” event on the Enhanced Fujita scale, the tornado caused no structural damage.
Dave Sills, the director of the Northern Tornadoes Project, mentioned, “It just survived long enough to throw up some spray over the water, which is a good indication that the winds were fairly strong…. It could have caused damage if it had come on shore, but thankfully it didn’t.”
According to a CBC meteorologist, Jay Scotland, waterspouts and landspouts, like the one observed in P.E.I., differ from conventional tornadoes as they are not linked to strong, rotating thunderstorms, making them weaker and shorter-lived.
Witnesses like Josh Coles, who saw the tornado while en route to Charlottetown, described how it grew, shrank, and vanished within minutes, followed by heavy rain and then clear skies. MacNeil, recalling waterspouts off P.E.I.’s south shore two decades ago, found the recent twin funnels closer than initially perceived.
Reflecting on the experience, MacNeil expressed, “This is probably the closest I will ever be to some tornado-like cyclones, which is just absolutely amazing. This is absolutely going to go down as one of the coolest tours I’ve ever done.”