Intense hailstorm southwest of Red Deer, Alberta, August 10, 2006

Intense hailstorm southwest of Red Deer, Alberta, August 10, 2006

Headed west from home on hwy 54 around 3:30pm after spotting a nice purple cell on Strathmore radar.
It was so hazy and the clouds were so low that I couldn't see any structure until halfway between Spruceview
and Caroline, where I could suddenly see a front stretching across the horizon. Headed south quickly.
Gleniffer lake cuts off north/south travel for nearly 30 km and by the time I got to where I could see the storm
good, I was committed to going south around the lake - quickly. It really reared up around James river bridge.
By the time I got onto hwy 587 to Bowden, it was hailing hard with 60+kmh winds.

4:08 pm, 24km due east of Bowden on hwy 587. At this point I have been speeding east away from hail for 10 minutes. Soon as it stopped I got out to take a pic of these crazy boiling rolling clouds. 2 seconds later am getting pelted with peas and grapes. Speed east.	0608010-010.jpg
4:23pm About 20km WSW of Innisfail. Called EC weather line to report a rotating updraft. I came over a little hill and could see a wildly rotating updraft sucking scud into it at a furious pace. I think that's as close to a funnel as I've seen yet. It was a few minutes till I got out of the rain and could snap a photo out the window.	0608010-020.jpg
4:30pm. 5km west of Innisfail. Another little weakly rotating rapid lifting updraft. The weathermod hail planes are bombing this thing constantly from very low altitude.	0608010-021.jpg
4:32pm On hwy 54 heading west (home!) to get the dogs in before who knows what. Logic tells me not to drive into this but I need to beat it home. Only 10 minutes Which is pretty much under the front edge of this gust front at the time of this photo.	0608010-028.jpg
The dogs are NOT going to be happy about this.	0608010-034.jpg
4:52pm After the last pic you can use your imagination to fill in what the 20 min trip was like. Not nice anyway. After dodging a few downed trees and a foot deep layer of leaves and branches on the road, I got home to 2 damp dogs and this. And 25mm in the rain gauge.	0608010-044.jpg
Had I stayed home, these would probably have made it to the safety of the garage. I might not get to chase anymore after this one :)	0608010-046.jpg
5:21 Went for a spin after it was over. 4 or 5 good sized trees down on our road.	0608010-053.jpg
We headed to Innisfail to get an idea of where the path of nastyness was. Nothing in Innisfail. Not even a flower broken off that we could see. Almost to Penhold on hwy2a before we saw hail drifts again. Apparently Penhold got some. This poor fellow's portable garage went for a ride. All kinds of signs damaged, lots of tree flotsam laying everywhere, the occasional street lake. 5:42pm	0608010-055.jpg
We decided to go east on 42 to see if we could see some of the golf ball sized stuff that we were hearing about on the radio. None yet but about 6 inches of grape winrows that you don't want to get a wheel into.	0608010-059.jpg
Having seen no golf balls, we got back on 2a back to Penhold. There was a coating of gravel on the highway from the wind and hail scouring the shoulder away. This photo is of an acreage a few miles west of Penhold on Hwy587. They had a beautiful stand of trees around their house. A Big one fell on the garage and a smaller one on the house. Lot of damage to the rest of the trees in the yard. The people were not home at the time fortunately.	0608010-081.jpg
6:15pm We went north on the first RR west of the river. About 2 miles north it was winter. All of a sudden you could see your breath and there was a thick fog laying over a few inches of hail. This is a type of berry farm. Everything stripped bare.	0608010-092.jpg
I couldn't tell what this crop was. Barley or wheat. Pounded completely flat. 1.5 hours after the storm, the hail drifts were still impressive.	0608010-100.jpg
This is perhaps 1/2 mile north of the last photo. Pounded, but not hammered flat.	0608010-104.jpg
This little area near the river seemed to get it about as bad as we saw on the trip.	0608010-107.jpg
6:26pm A couple kids out in the fog surveying a flat crop.	0608010-111.jpg
Anything not evergreen was completely stripped bare up here. The wind here must have been bad.	0608010-113.jpg
Same area as above	0608010-115.jpg
These bushes had bark stripped off along with the leaves. This is about 3 miles ENE from home as the crow flies. We are feeling very fortunate to have only lost some flowers.	0608010-117.jpg

Update Aug 11
Went out for a spin before noon to see what it looked like to the west and north.
Added a few more photos from Aug10

A few more shots from Aug 10	0608010-012.jpg
Apple tree took a beating	0608010-047.jpg
This is a another shot of of the acreage west of Penhold that had a tree down on the garage. Driving down the highway at this time.	0608010-075.jpg
Deosn't look much like August.	0608010-102.jpg
This poor fella was looking a bit confused.	0608010-123.jpg
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This was the first real building damage we saw.	0608010-134.jpg
August 11 photos start here. As we looked around the yard last night, we noticed some missing paint on the north facing deckrails. I'm glad I wasn't caught out golfing in this. Those would have hurt!	0608011-002.jpg
This was a thriving wetland just down our road a bit. Pretty much completely flattened. Wonder what happened to all the critters in there.	0608011-009.jpg
About 3 miles west of home, a mile east of Markerville.	0608011-011.jpg
Markerville got hit hard. Looks like everybody has damage.	0608011-015.jpg
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Just west of Markerville. Still hail drifts here at 11am the next day.	0608011-031.jpg
Found what must have been golf balls and perhaps bigger.	0608011-032.jpg
About a 2 miles NW of Markerville. A few hundred yards down the road there wasn't even a leaf on the ground. Nothing.	0608011-033.jpg
A mile north of Markerville it starts again. This house was out in the open and appears to have been hit hard.	0608011-036.jpg
Just south of last photo.	0608011-037.jpg
Across the road to the west	0608011-043.jpg
The other 3 sides of these granaries had good paint. Not much left on the west side.	0608011-045.jpg
Crews were busy cleaning up many downed trees.	0608011-047.jpg
This was a beautiful field of canola yesterday.	0608011-053.jpg
Pine Hill Colony, 2 milesNW of home. Looks like the core went right over here. We noticed in the spring that all their buildings have metal roofing. Good plan. I didn't see any damage here.	0608011-055.jpg