Two tiny funnel clouds that poked out of clouds about 20 km northwest of Red Deer at lunch time on Thursday were spotted by a few Central Albertans.

Joel Stalwick, of Red Deer, was in Gasoline Alley when he saw them. He grabbed his digital camera and was able to capture one of the funnels that appeared in the direction of Sylvan Lake at about 12:30 p.m.

He said the first funnel was visible for about three minutes. The second one could barely be seen and didn’t last as long.

Neither of them touched down.

It was Stalwick’s first funnel sighting. He said if the cloud they came out of had been any lighter in colour it would have been very difficult to see them.

Stalwick said he had been driving through the Pine Lake area about half an hour before a devastating tornado struck there on July 14, 2000.

He wasn’t worried about the minor funnels he saw on Thursday.

“A cold weather funnel cloud is very unlikely it will damage anything,” Stalwick said. “Last night looked a lot more scary. I thought for sure we were going to have one last night.”

Environment Canada said two other funnel clouds were spotted Thursday. A small funnel near Hobbema at 2:45 p.m. did not touch down. Another small funnel spotted at 2:53 p.m. about two km north of Stettler did touch down briefly on water in the area.

When a funnel cloud touches down, it’s called a tornado.

“There’s probably been multiple, multiple funnels out there today,” said Brian Proctor, warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada.

“We do have unstable air mass and we have a lot of cold air starting to spill into the province from British Columbia. If we get that combination, we get a lot of potential instability in the atmosphere.”

Proctor said cold core funnels don’t have the energy or dynamics to produce severe conditions. But there is the potential for them to be damaging.

“Any sort of funnel cloud or tornado can be dangerous and needs to be treated with respect. If they do come down to the ground they tend to be of short duration and not be as strong as a super cell sort of tornadic storm would be.”

Lisa Coldwells, Environment Canada meteorologist, said more funnel clouds may be spotted as people become more aware of them.

“I think we have more people with eyes to the sky,” Coldwells said.

Thunderstorms are needed to produce tornados and Central Alberta experiences frequent storms.

“People in Red Deer are almost in the absolute perfect place if you want to live through many thunderstorms. It is the strongest area in Alberta, the corridor from between Calgary and Drayton Valley. This has been documented well back into the ’50s.”

“I think they used to call it hail alley.”

Contact Susan Zielinski at szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com