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Summer storm rips through area

Storm-watchers got quite a show last Thursday evening, as a storm walloped the area with baseball-sized hail stones that obliterated crops and gardens, nearly 100 km/hour winds ripping apart trees, power outages reported throughout east central Alber
Dark clouds are seen near Elk Point as a storm moves through the area on July 13. The storm brought large hail and strong winds, along with heavy rain in some areas.
Dark clouds are seen near Elk Point as a storm moves through the area on July 13. The storm brought large hail and strong winds, along with heavy rain in some areas.

Storm-watchers got quite a show last Thursday evening, as a storm walloped the area with baseball-sized hail stones that obliterated crops and gardens, nearly 100 km/hour winds ripping apart trees, power outages reported throughout east central Alberta, and nearly four inches of rain falling in certain areas.

Eric Germain was out with his family on a boat at Stoney Lake when they saw the flashes of light and continuous rolling thunder advancing, as the warm, sunny day darkened into threatening-looking clouds shortly after 6 p.m.

“We got off as quick as we could. When we started driving home, that’s when the real storm hit,” he said, noting it was a scary drive home for the family. “It sounded like World War II when the hail started hitting us . . . I thought the windshield was going to break.”

While they were able to get home safely, the Germains’ home and the home of their neighbours, less than 10 km southeast of St. Paul, was badly hit in the storm, with vehicles and campers dented, trees smashed down, the garden flattened, and their neighbour’s house windows broken.

The Germains waited until close to an hour before leaving the house, emerging into calmer weather, with the temperature at 25 plus degrees. Even after the passage of an hour, the hailstones they collected were the size of tennis balls, he said.

“Nobody I’ve talked to has ever seen hail that big,” said Germain. “It was crazy, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

The focus of many people during storms is on potential tornados, with funnels spotted throughout Alberta and at least one weak tornado touching down about 100 km southwest of Edmonton.

However, Dan Kulak, meteorologist with Environment Canada, said pictures of fist-sized hailstones, taken in the St. Paul area and sent to the agency, were of more interest than any tornado.

“Those are the biggest hailstones we’ve seen. Those stones are comparable to the stones that fell 30 years ago in Edmonton, on July 31, 1987,” he said, of the Black Friday storm that saw a giant F4 twister carve through the east side of Edmonton, killing 27 and injuring 600.

He added that if people had kept larger stones well preserved in a freezer, they would be of scientific interest, and could be referred either to Environment Canada or the University of Alberta.

The size of the hail posed just one more hit to crops in what has been a “challenging year” for local farmers, agreed Norm Boulianne.

Boulianne saw a quarter of crops by his house totally damaged by golf ball-sized hail, with the property located in the same area as the Germains’ home.

“It’s all pretty much a write-off,” he said of the crops, adding, however, that his fields closer to Agland escaped similar damage. “They took a hit, but they’re not destroyed. We’re still going to give them a shot.”

In his 20-some years of farming, however, he said he had never seen such a bad storm, with the size of the hail and the fact that nearly four inches of rain fell in the area. However, the storm showed how localized weather can be, as just a mile north, he heard people had rainfall, but saw no hail.

“It’s going to be a huge impact,” he said, noting he doesn’t carry insurance for hail damage on his crops. But the weather is always a wild card for farmers, he notes philosophically, saying, “You can’t do nothing. You can’t control (it).”

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