Bryn Hansen was eating steak and potatoes for dinner with his grandmother Saturday evening, when they heard whipping winds, prompting them to hide in the basement.
When they returned upstairs, they saw tin swirling in the air as a tornado headed one way — and in the other direction, the destruction it wrought.
“All the buildings were gone. Just ruined,” Hansen said.
He was grateful Sunday, as family and friends attended his grandparents’ property to help clean up. The tornado damaged structures on their land, including his grandparents’ shop, which was destroyed.
“It’s been there my whole life,” Hansen said. “Looking out the window and it just not being there anymore was just crazy.”
A tornado passed through parts of central Alberta Saturday evening, but particularly Clearwater County, a district about 210 kilometres southwest of Edmonton.
Environment Canada was tracking the thunderstorm that produced the twister. Around 5:20 p.m. MT, the agency issued a red tornado warning, describing the situation as “very dangerous and potentially life-threatening” as multiple communities were in the tornado’s path, including the town of Rocky Mountain House.
The warning was briefly expanded to other counties, but lifted completely almost three hours later. After 9 p.m., Environment Canada left the area under a yellow advisory.
Buildings, homes, trees, roads and other local infrastructure in the area suffered “significant damage,” according to county officials. But according to Clearwater County Reeve Jordon Northcott, no injuries nor livestock deaths related to the tornado have been reported.
Rocky Mountain House Mayor Shane Boniface told CBC News other parts of the county seem to have been harder hit than his town. Most of the clean-up in town Sunday, he said, revolves around downed trees, blown garbage and knocked-off shingles.
In Clearwater County, Northcott said the tornado destroyed buildings, damaged homes and tore down trees. He witnessed the devastation while driving near Leslieville, Alta.
“That’s when it really sank in that this is quite a disaster,” he said.
The damage caused by the tornado was “just dumbfouding,” said Amanda Olson.
On Sunday, she was helping her family assess the damage to her mother-in-law’s property and and clear out debris from the backyard, including decades-old trees that were broken or uprooted.
“There’s kind of a loss for words when you actually look at everything,” Olson told CBC News.
“We’ve been here for about 15 years, and the fires that we’ve had and the memories and camping here … it’s been a second home, so to lose a piece of that is devastating,” she said.
Olson expressed gratitude for Saturday’s emergency alerts. She and her family were staying in that yard in an RV camper, but relocated after the tornado warning, she said.
“We got out lucky on this, though it looks as bad as it is,” Olson said.
Crews are working to clear debris and address immediate safety concerns, Clearwater County said on social media, noting that residents are asked to avoid affected areas, exercise caution while on roads and stay away from downed trees and power lines.
A full damage assessment of the region will be completed in the coming days, the county said.
In a social media post on Saturday night, Jason Nixon, Alberta’s finance minister who represents some of the affected areas as MLA, said the province would be in close contact with both the county and town through the clean up.
Northcott confirmed Sunday the provincial government has reached out to Clearwater County, saying they are “very willing” to help, particularly with woody debris.
Multiple provincial ministers released a statement Sunday afternoon thanking first responders and offering sympathies to affected residents.
The Northern Tornadoes Project, based out of Western University in London, Ont., said in a social media post that it confirmed “at least one” tornado near Rocky Mountain House.
The group’s crews are currently investigating the twister, surveying affected areas Sunday on foot and by drone, said Matthew Woodward, the Alberta damage survey lead for the project’s parent organization, the Canadian Severe Storms Lab.
“Today, specifically, we have seen roof damage. We saw a barn just down this road that was swept clean from its foundation,” Woodward said.
After spending many years surveying tornadoes, Woodward said seeing communities come together, lending each other a helping hand, resonates with him every time.
“I admire that, throughout Alberta, people are coming together to recover from these tragedies, and I hope that continues throughout the province,” he said.
Eric Van Lochem, an Environment Canada meteorologist, said it’s too early to tell if more than one twister hit the Clearwater County region.
“It looks like it missed most of the populated areas, but it it did hit some structures,” he said Sunday morning.
Nearly 75 per cent more tornadoes have hit Alberta so far in 2026 than during all of 2025, according to data from the Northern Tornadoes Project.
Daybreak Alberta9:19Tornado touches down near Rocky Mountain House
We hear from Environment Canada meteorologist Eric Van Lochem about this storm, its damage and where it came from.
It’s difficult to attribute this change to one factor, Van Lochem said, but increased moisture, resulting in more thunderstorms, plays a large role in developing tornadoes. An active jet-stream pattern this summer is also a factor.
“It’s just a recipe for repeated thunderstorms,” he said.
“It’s unlike some of the other years we’ve seen in recent memory.”
