Decade after Elie tornado, former storm chaser remembers every detail

When Justin Hobson left work one June evening 10 years ago, the storm chaser was hoping he might spot something he had never seen before.

• Summer tornado in Elie, Man., was strongest in Canadian history
• Tornadoes leave trail of destruction in Manitoba

Still an undergraduate science student, Hobson had known for days that weather conditions forming around southern Manitoba might produce a tornado.

He became fascinated with severe weather as a 12-year-old watching the summer blockbuster Twister in 1996, and later took up storm chasing just like the movie's main characters.

He still remembers clearly the tropical heat and humidity the day he finally got to see a twister in real life.

In the days leading up to June 22, 2007, Hobson was refreshing Environment Canada's radar constantly, watching for a storm to show up on his screen.

"It was extremely unstable that day," he remembers.

Above the humid air near the surface was a mass of colder air. Winds were fierce and changing directions in higher altitudes — ideal tornado conditions.

Hobson said just before 5 p.m., he left work in Winnipeg and began driving home toward Oak Bluff. On McGillivray Boulevard, he got a first glimpse of the storm he'd been hoping for.

"It looked like a mushroom cloud growing," he said. "I was so excited."

After a quick stop at home for his baseball cap and camera, Hobson drove toward Elie, about 45 kilometres west of Winnipeg, where the clouds were darkest.

Around 6 p.m., and just over a kilometre south of the centre of the storm, he parked his car on a gravel road between fields, eyes focused on the clouds above.

The speed at which the storm churned was unlike anything he had ever seen.

"That one sticks out — how fast it was developing."

Not long after, a wall cloud — lower cloud below the updraft of the storm — formed, which is often a precursor to a tornado. Then small funnel clouds began to "dance" down to the ground, Hobson said, only to be sucked back up into the swell. 

'It was quite calm,' storm chaser recalls

Around 6:30 p.m., he saw the tornado that would go on to do so much damage in Elie form. It also turned out to be the first-ever F-5 tornado recorded in Canada.

That means the tornado topped the Fujita scale, a system devised to measure the strength of a tornado. An F-5 tornado would have been estimated to have produced winds between 420 km/h and 510 km/h. The Fujita scale has since been replaced with the enhanced Fujita, or EF, scale.

"It just grew and grew and then got skinny again and then really grew, and that's what led to the destruction as it crept toward the town," said Hobson.

While the tornado reached speeds of up to 500 km/h, Hobson said he never felt scared or threatened by it.

"It was quite calm. The birds were chirping," Hobson said. "It was actually peaceful."

Elie tornado anniversary

8 years ago

Duration 0:32

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Elie Manitoba tornado. It was — and still is — Canada's largest recorded twister in history.

The tornado ended up lasting about 40 minutes, according to data collected by Environment Canada. It travelled about six kilometres, mostly through fields, but caused significant damage in the community of Elie.

There, the tornado flattened homes, tore apart a flour mill, smashed trucks and ripped out hydro lines.

At one point it picked up a two-storey house and threw it 23 metres. It also sucked up a van full of drywall and tossed it 100 metres, according to Environment Canada.

Amazingly, no one was killed in the storm, with only minor injuries reported. 

Hobson recalls seeing reminders of the storm's power — like fluffs of insulation and shingles landing on the ground around his vehicle — as he drove home after the tornado had ended.

"That was obviously the debris that got lifted from the tornado hitting the town," he said.

He later turned the experience into a master's thesis. He now works as a forecaster with Environment Canada.