Pine Lake Tornado

[John Hudson]

It was nine years ago today that an F3 strength tornado tore into a campground at Pine Lake, Alberta in the early evening hours. The storm ripped trailers apart, throwing debris and victims into the nearby lake.

The tornado was on the ground for approximately 12 miles. Destruction of the Green Acres Campground at Pine Lake resulted in 12 fatalities and 140 injuries.

video link: http://www.theweathernetwork.com/video/weather_news/4


John
VE4 JTH

 

[Scott Nelson]

Thank you for remembering John. Powerful video/words.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Is there video from this event? I remember awhile back seeing a video from a camper/trailer park in Canada when a tornado was going through it...it was a pretty intense video. Im not sure if it was this event or not? Does the video ring a bell with anyone? I saw at one of many seminars Ive attended and I cant place which one it was.

 

[Andrea Griffa]

Thanks John, we all always need to hear again what a tornado can be, in order to not forget the respect for Nature.

 

[Simon Andersen]

The only video I've ever seen of the actual tornado, available at this link: http://archives.cbc.ca/environment/extreme_weather/clips/11763/

Someone from ST once mentioned a close-up video showing the tornados inflow moving by. Haven't seen it though. Perhaps the Canadies know more.

 

[Patrick Boomer]

This event is what really got me watching the Alberta Foothills. I had always been a weather watcher, but never real serious about it until that day.

We were visiting relatives to the north that afternoon, watching this thing brew to the south. We were on our way home when it really flared up, halfway home we knew somebody was getting something. We got home to a yard full of hail and two very freaked dogs, the core had just missed the yard to the south, laying a 1/4 mile wide swath of barley flat as if it was steamrolled.
No sooner did we walk in the house that the reports of a tornado at Pine Lake started coming in. We have family with a cabin out there but fortunately they were not there at the time, the cabin was on the east side of the lake across from the campground and just on the north edge of circulation, lots of trees down but not much damage to the cabin. A hundred yards down the road sat the ground floor of a house with no walls, but the washer and dryer still there.

Across the lake at the campground it was a bad scene, even from the other side as we were helping clean up over there the next day.
The campground sits on a w/e slope down to the lake and the tornado came in from the west where nobody could see it until it was on them.
Dozens of holiday trailers were tossed into the lake like toys, complete carnage.

Today it is hard to tell anything happened. Trees have grown back in, things are built back up, the campground is still going.

This is the only photo of the tornado that I know of.
It is looking southwest, the tornado is just approaching the ridge above the lake and campground, which sits in a depression to the left in the photo.