'Dust devil' winds through Moncton's Centennial Park

What looked to many visitors to Moncton'sCentennial Park on Sunday afternoon like a tornado was almost certainly a dust devil, according to CBC meteorologist Jim Abraham.

"They can be rather intense and rather intimidating looking but they're very localized and they form in conditions exactly that happened [Sunday]inMoncton," he said during an interview Mondayon Information Morning Moncton.

"I'll almost guarantee it was a dust devil."

Sandra Foster was at Centennial Park on Sunday afternoon feeding the ducks with her two daughters when she saw the unusualwind funnel form.

"Sand started picking up and swirling into the airand it kept going a little bit higher and higher and then all of the sudden it justran down the hill, hit the water and it went up about 12-feet high at least of water and big waves," she said.

Honest to good God ... I've never in my life seen anything hit water and go like that.- Sandra Foster

"You could have surfed in it it was unbelievable."

Foster watched the funnel travelinto the parking lot and says other witnesses told her it dissipated when it hit a building.

"I'm 48 and I've never seen anything like that before," she said.

Abraham says dust devils can form quickly if conditions are just right, as they were in Monctonon Sunday.

The temperature was 17 C with light winds at about four kilometres per hour and very low humidity of about 30 per cent.

"Soyou get a lot of heat in the low levels of the atmosphere because the sun is quite strong," he said.

Information Morning - Moncton1:53Dust devil or tornado

Weatherman Jim Abraham explains

"With the calm winds you get these eddies forming as the heat rises from the ground and indeed, because it's been rather dry, you end up getting aperfect situation for that heat over grass areas and over ball fields and the like to form dust devils."

Foster saidwhen the dust devil hit the water she and her daughters were immediately drenched.

"Honest to good God... I've never in my life seen anything hit water and go like that," she said.

Abraham has seen dust devils that have been strong enough to lift children off the ground.

"It's enough to knock somebody over the strongest ones," he said.