The storm that pummelled the Sechelt area on the Sunshine Coast produced a brief tornado that brought down trees and damaged the power lines along Highway 101.
The tornado touched down near Halfmoon Bay and there were no injuries reported.
The Northern Tornados Project at Western University has confirmed the weak tornado on the morning of November 4th.
The university says it was an EF0 tornado, the weakest on the scale, with an estimated maximum wind speed of 115 km/h.
The Enhanced Fujita Scale, or EF Scale, is used to assign a tornado a ‘rating’ based on estimated wind speeds and related damage.
In a post on social media platform X, the NTP says the tornado felled trees along a short path, falling on power lines and briefly blocking roads including the Sunshine Coast Highway.
Witnesses captured dramatic videos of the event that are being shared on social media and have been viewed thousands of times.
Monday’s intense winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of people on the Sunshine Coast, Lower Mainland, and Vancouver Island.
The hardest hit areas were Sechelt, Victoria, and North Vancouver.
As of 6am, BC Hydro was reporting just one power outage remaining near Sechelt affecting a small number of customers, and on Gambier Island near Gibsons, about 340 customers remain without power after Monday’s storm.
