Danny Sayers was driving his truck along Ranger Lake Road on Sunday when he noticed a white funnel cloud up ahead.
About 15 minutes before spotting the funnel cloud, Sayers said hail began falling from the sky.
He then drove his truck down Ranger Lake Road in a downpour of heavy rain. Sayers said he felt a change in pressure and the wind began entering his truck in a way he had never felt before.
"It was kind of a unique experience. I've never ever seen that before or been through that or how much it rained. It was just like going through a car wash — when all that water comes on to you at once," he said.
"That's where I finally stopped my truck and said, 'OK, you know, this looks dangerous.' That's the minute — you can kind of hear it in my truck too — the wind blowing like that."
Once he stopped the truck, he saw the white funnel cloud ahead of him and took a video of the tail end of it as it dissipated into the air.
Sayers sent the video to Environment Canada and to the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University.
"What I'm interested in is if anybody got hurt or if they need evidence through their insurance if their camp got wrecked, or whatever," he said.
David Sills is the director of the Northern Tornadoes Project. He has reviewed the video and confirmed that Sayers saw a funnel cloud, but said more information is needed to refer to it as a tornado.
"We are continuing to look for evidence of any damage in the vicinity. If we can connect the damage with the funnel cloud, we can then classify it as a tornado," Sills said.
The Northern Tornadoes Project has documented about 200 tornadoes in the area since 1980, all of them classified between EF0 and EF2. The most severe tornadoes are classified as EF5.
The area described by Sills stretches from the Sault north up to Montreal River Harbour, east to Kirkland Lake and south past Sturgeon Falls.