Fast-moving cloud whips up strong winds in Yarmouth County Tuesday night

Many local residents are talking about something strange that happened in the sky over Yarmouth County and other parts of western Nova Scotia Tuesday evening, April 28.

Many people are reporting having seen what looked to them like a large horizontal funnel cloud pass overhead. Others have described what they saw as a low, long, dark horizontal cloud that passed over their homes. Sightings were seen between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. with reports all over Yarmouth County, including such areas as Pembroke, Hebron, Chebogue, Arcadia, Melbourne, Wedgeport, Sluice Point and parts of the town.

As the fast moving cloud passed over areas, it whipped up very strong winds for one or more minutes, bending trees, picking up rocks from the ground and tossing around debris. The winds completely died down after the cloud has passed. People have described it as eerie.

Yarmouth County resident Stephen Sollows, who lives on the Ellis Road, saw the cloud and feels what people were seeing was actually a squall line, as opposed to a funnel cloud. “It was a bit odd and it was fairly low to the ground. When you looked up overhead it looked very large and when you looked down the length of it because you were looking down a great distance it got narrower and narrower as it got away from you, so it did look like a funnel cloud in that respect. It was very, very large.”

Sollows thought it looked to be 12 to 15 kilometres long, which might explain why there were so many multiple sightings in so many parts of the town and county. “It was quite turbulent and you could see the clouds moving,” he says.

Environment Canada says what people in Yarmouth County were likely seeing was a roll cloud.

See story and photos posted on NovaNewsNow:

www.novanewsnow.com/article-331480-Environment-Canada-explains-strange-weather-phenomena.html

There are also reports of strange weather behavior coming from beyond Yarmouth County Tuesday evening.

A woman from Kings County contacted NovaNewsNow.com to say that she was in her kitchen when a huge gust of wind and dark cloud came over her house around the same time sightings of a mysterious cloud was being seen in Yarmouth County. "The trees in the backyard seemed to bend in two and my lawnchairs, shovel, rake and everything else on the deck and surrounding area lifted to the other side of the yard and deck in a matter of seconds," said Amanda Lewis, who lives in the Kingston/Greenwood area. "I ran out to grab what I could before it disappeared. The wind was so strong I had a hard time opening our side door and could barely walk to the deck."

She said it left as quickly as it came but then 10 minutes later something similar happened again. She said the wind was quite strong and that it was quite frightening.

NovaNewsNow reader Angela Thompson said she and her husband were driving on Highway 101 near the Kentville/New Minas area Tuesday evening around 7:30 p.m. "It was so scary. The air was a brownish colour from all the sand/dirt flying around...The winds were so high we felt like we were driving through a tornado."

She says they had to slow down because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to stay on the road. "It didn't take long to drive out of it, but it was really scary," she says.

Tom Amero is a volunteer firefighter from Plympton, Digby County. “We were fighting a brush fire when the cloud passed overhead, everything flared up instantly,” Amero says, adding when he arrived home that evening his wife told him about what had happened at their home. “She was upstairs in our home when she felt the whole house shake,” he says. “ In less than a minute, our neighbour called to tell her that our trampoline had blown from our front lawn about 50 to 75 feet across our yard and got caught in a tree. She says she thought briefly of taking the kids to the basement for safety but the wind stopped before she had a chance to act.”

Back in Yarmouth, people were just as stunned by what they were seeing.

Sjanna James was on Starrs Road in Yarmouth around 8:30 p.m., just outside the Dollarama. “As we walked to the car it was very calm and just as we were about to get in the car we noticed the cloud rolling towards us in the sky. The wind picked up and whipped the dust around, it was actually quite frightening,” she says. “We stood directly under it as it passed. The sky got very dark and then after it passed the wind dropped back out. We could not see the beginning or the end. It looked like a sideways tornado.”

NovaNewsNow.com is interested in what you may have seen. If you have photos or video, or would like to share what you may have seen, you can send an email to info@thevanguard.ca.