August 1 '2006 Lac Drolet, Quebec tornado

[Rocky Rascovich]

Killing some time here at the farm waiting for the ice storm to do its dastardly deeds, I started doing a search for Canadian tornadoes and was unaware of this event that happened in eastern Quebec on Aug. 1 '06. Looking at the analysis for that day... a strong vortmax was moving eastward through the region with an attendant warm front where helicities were sufficent for tornadic production along with high capes, low lcl's and temperatures that were in the low to mid 30'sC. The result is the video link you can see below.

The first link is a news report in french from where the tornado hit near Lac Drolet, which is approximately 120km. south of Quebec City and probably no more than 35-40km north of the Maine border. The second video is from YouTube and documents 5 minutes of this tornado shot by a local resident. Some of the video is shakey, but still has some great moments to it... looks like almost any tornado you'd see here on the plains.

This would make for a fascinating case study for this event as tornadoes in this part of Canada are very rare indeed

http://lcn.canoe.com/lcn/infos/regional/archives/2006/08/20060802-215537.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_GvyPSXwk

Enjoy and stay warm!
Rocky&family

 

[JF Massicotte]

I am actually studying the case since I was chasing on that day (but I could not get to that region because of work). I did identified some of these storms that were running south-east across Trois-Rivière but my friend Steeve Laurin who was living there didn't have his car and could not chase the storms this day (he wanted to but...)

Two tornadoes were reported in the region you mentionned. The Lac drolet one (F2) is now the most famous one here in Québec. The other did hit St-Gedeon de Beauce.

Here is a slideshow from René Héroux, meteorologist at Environment Canada.

http://img136.imageshack.us:80/slideshow/player.php?id=img136/7089/11558159330te.smil

I will soon post an entire report on this event.

On aug 1st, a series of violent storms did hit the province. I had to chase near my home 35 km N from Montréal where I encountered a strong HP Supercell that caused wind damages on more than 250km.

My friend Allan Theunissen probably got the best pictures and video from this storm. This is also the same storm where Geatan Cormier think he has caught a tornadoe on tape.

A violent squall line followed, causing one death because of strong straight line winds.

 

[Gaetan Cormier]

JF is right, we got pounded like crazy on that day!

The footage of the Lac Drolet tornado was shot by a friend of mine, he totally freak out when he saw that.. wish I was in is place

With that storm system like JF mentionned, several damage occured because of strong winds. I possibly caught my first tornado on that night but will never really know because it was dark.. no big deal. Another friend of mine possibly caught by also caught by accident some rotation on the ground and we can notice also a funnel dropping from the cloud... so all that to say that it was a hell of a day! I want more!!!!!

Cheers!