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‘I Was Keeping An Eye On It’: Canadian Mows His Lawn in Midst of Tornado

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Tony Maples Photography

 

A picture of a man in Alberta, Canada, mowing his lawn with a tornado twisting behind him has become a viral sensation on social media. Cecilia Wessels, of Three Hills, Alberta, took the photo of Theunis, her husband, on the evening of Friday, June 2, as the storm passed near their home.

‘I Was Keeping An Eye On It’: Canadian Mows His Lawn in Midst of Tornado

Photo: Facebook/97.3 The Wave

She explained in an interview with CBC News that cutting the grass had been on her husband’s list of things to do, and as he began the job, she went to lay down for a nap. She was later woken up by her 9-year-old daughter, upset because she said there was something that looked like a tornado in the sky but her dad wouldn’t come in the house. Theunis Wessels has explained that in reality, the tornado was much further away than it looks in the picture, and had been moving away from their property.

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“I literally took the picture to show my mum and dad in South Africa, ‘Look there’s a tornado,’ and now everyone is like, ‘Why is your husband mowing the lawn?”‘ Cecilia Wessels said in her interview on Saturday, June 3. Photographs from other witnesses of the storm have recently come out identifying downed trees and a roof torn from a barn, however there have been no reports of injuries. Theunis Wessels contends that he was aware of what was taking place in his surroundings, and at one point he observed as the twister formed and connected from the sky to the ground. “I was keeping an eye on it,” he told CBC News. Unlike in Texas, where tornadoes are unfortunately a regular reality to contend with, the Wessels say that tornadoes aren’t common in South Africa (where they moved to Canada from). But Theunis explained that he’s watched a storm chasers program on T.V., and so he was familiar with what a tornado was and the damage that they could wreak. “It looks much closer if you look in the photo, but it was really far away. Well, not really far, far away, but it was far away from us,” he said.

Source:

CBC News