WATCH: Late season tornado spotted in southeast Sask. on Wednesday

A tornado touched down in southeastern Saskatchewan on Wednesday.

Environment Canada confirmed the twister, which was spotted northeast of Langbank, roughly 40 minutes southwest of Moosomin, just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

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“We got the call from the spotters who were seeing it, and we saw the pictures and we subsequently were able to issue a tornado warning right away after that,” explained meteorologist Dave Carlsen.

Carlsen said the weather service got no further information after that, suggesting it was just a brief touchdown.

The tornado was spotted northeast of Langbank, roughly 40 minutes southwest of Moosomin, just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday. (Davia Paige/Submitted)

“So far as we know, it wasn’t a very long-lasting tornado, and we don’t know if it did any damage yet,” Carlsen said.

Carlsen added that it’s quite late in the season for a tornado to touch down in Saskatchewan.

“It’s pretty weird. Usually our tornado season is from the tail end of May to about mid-August. Sometimes we get them into late August. I can think of the Whitewood tornado back in the late ‘90s,” he said.

“To get one on September 18, that’s really, really late in the season. Not unprecedented, but really late in the season.”

Solar panels damaged when a tornado ripped through the Langbank area on Wednesday. (Dewald Steyn/Submitted)

Asked why the tornado hit so late in the year, Carlsen said it’s due to a “fairly out-of-season, moist and unstable air mass,” which is fuelling the storms moving through the province.

“It actually moves northward over days and days from the Gulf of Mexico, believe it or not, and it has an easy path in July. But over the wintertime and even the spring and the fall, it has a much harder time getting far northward, because you get those southward surges of cold air,” explained Carlsen.

Damage left at a yard in Langbank, Saskatchewan after a tornado ripped through the area.
(Dewald Steyn/Submitted)

“But it was unimpeded this time, and it made it as far north as  southeastern Saskatchewan, and the result was that tornado that we saw.”

Dewald Steyn lives in Wawota, about 15 minutes away from Langbank where the tornado touched down. Steyn said the weather leading up to storm just kept changing.

“It was really humid and it was weird,” Steyn said. “It would spit for a bit, be sunny and then it started raining again. It was interesting.”

He said he found out about the tornado from his brother, which prompted Steyn to go looking for a better view of it.

“It was a rainy day, so we weren’t working. My brother was on his way to Yorkton and let my family know that the clouds were spinning and (he) thinks there’s going to be a tornado,” he explained.

“We got in my truck and we just drove out to the open road to see better, and you could see it forming and touch down on the ground.”

Steyn said the tornado touched down, went back up and then touched down again. He suggested it was on the ground for 10 to 15 minutes in total.

“It was going north for a bit, for two or three minutes, and started going towards the east. The wind was pretty strong, and you could feel it cooling. It was average size,” he explained.

Steyn said he drove by one property that suffered some damage.

“There were a couple bins (that) fell over, and solar panels ripped apart,” he explained.

–with files from 650 CKOM’s Shane Clausing