THUNDER BAY — What started out as a typical summer afternoon quickly turned into an unforgettable spectacle for some campers at Marks Lake on the Labour Day weekend.
They saw firsthand how fast a major wind event can develop, and how easily it can put people in danger of being struck by flying objects.
Thunder Bay resident Brent Schaworski said: "It was pretty awesome to see the power of nature like that come out of nowhere . . . To watch it actually grow in front of you was pretty crazy."
He was at a relative's camp Saturday afternoon, preparing to help him do some work on a boat lift.
"It was a nice sunny day, so we got into the water and were getting everything ready to move the boat lift around. Then the wind started picking up, so we left it to sit down for a while, and were watching a thunderstorm kind of grow on the other side of the lake. It wasn't dark or anything where we were, but my cousin Dennis and I looked up and here's this little waterspout kind of growing in the middle of the lake," Schaworski told TBnewswatch.
He had the presence of mind to grab his cellphone to record video which he included in a social media post where he described the event as a small tornado.
Within 30 or 40 seconds, Schaworski said, "it grew. There was kind of like two of them put together, and it came across right to the shoreline, grabbed the boat lift, grabbed the dock, flipped everything over. And as fast as it was there, it was gone, and never touched the neighbours. Some of the people didn't even know what happened until it was posted later on Facebook."
When the group returned to the shoreline to inspect the damage, they found a few bent and mangled components on the boat lift and the dock.
"But if we weren't there, physically, watching it happen, I would never have believed that it happened right in front of us because there was no damage on the shore or to the neighbours or anything like that," Schaworski said.
"It was a very neat experience, to see it firsthand and the power, and how it could only hit certain places. Luckily nobody was hurt."
The incident was reported to the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ont., which conducted an investigation.
On Wednesday afternoon, NTP executive director David Sills said the Marks Lake event has officially been classified as an EF0 tornado, which is at the lowest end of the tornado rating scale of zero to five.
It had an estimated wind speed of 90 km/h.
NOTE: This story was updated at 2 pm on Sept. 4, 2024 with new information provided by the Northern Tornadoes Project
