Ice tornado? A mysterious shape was spotted above chilly Vancouver this weekend
An unusual sight was spotted high above Vancouver City Hall this weekend.
Henry Huang captured a video of what he called an ice tornado and shared it with Daily Hive.
The video shows a white spiral reaching high into the sky on one of Vancouver’s chilliest days this week.
What IS happening here? We asked the experts about the mysterious shape over City Hall in Vancouver. pic.twitter.com/JmE2bmxAzX
— Claire Fenton (@Ceeceefenton) January 15, 2024
But was it an ice tornado?
Meteorologists at Environment and Climate Change Canada were skeptical that the video captured anything that dramatic.
Alyssa Charbonneau said it’s inconclusive and that it might be a contrail, steam, or smoke from a heating vent or a chimney.
“Ice tornados are not real,” she told Daily Hive.
Charbonneau explained that there are unusual-looking shapes in the sky that can form similar to this, like what was spotted in the Okanagan recently.
This morning was the perfect setup for a #SteamDevil over #OkanaganLake — this captured from the Gellatly area of Westbank/#WestKelowna #BC looking toward Kelowna.
H/T 📸: Ellie Thornhill on FB who granted me permission to share the photo to Twitter/X #BCwx #BCstorm #BCcold pic.twitter.com/90sNOJx6dP
— Ryan Voutilainen 🇨🇦🇫🇮 (@RyanVoutilainen) January 12, 2024
“There are things called steam devils that we get over water [when] you get steam/fog coming off the water, and there’s very cold air over warmer water, and that can result in these things. They kind of look like waterspouts, but they’re more akin to a dust devil that might form over the ground,” she said.
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“But in terms of like a funnel cloud, in the sky, especially tornadoes, those come from thunderstorms,” Charbonneau added.