July 4
Plenty to see today.
After a few days of hit or miss showers, that all missed here, today some more summer like storms came roaring out of the hills. Had it been 5C warmer we may have had some serious issues around here, but with the temperature around 23C and still lacking moisture at the surface, everything was way up there. No ground scrapers today.
We headed out west early to see what might roll out, but our alley was in a dry hole, storms were firing to the south and north, but could not get going due west, flaring up quickly in the hills and dying as soon as they got out. After milling around for a few hours watching interesting sheary bits here and there, we headed back around 5, and got home just as a cell/squall was building down from Ponoka to Gull Lake. While out west of here looking at the tail end of the line, I noticed a long rope hanging out of the bottom of a big cell to the northeast that had popped out of the line. It was about 20 miles away but was clear as day, so I headed off for Red Deer to see what was up. The funnel stayed there for half of the drive in, or about 15 minutes, but was often obscured by rain or hail. It was gone by the time I got close enough for a half decent photo, and I wound up with one crummy shot from 10 miles away. Tornado warnings were issued for the city of Red Deer and surrounding area for a while, but I haven’t heard of any touchdowns yet.
Most of the people in Red Deer saw the thing judging from the number of photos and videos of it on The Weather Network’s website, which is good news, it means folks are watching the skies.
Still no rain worth measuring here, the lucky ones in Sylvan Lake and Red Deer have been soaking up the inches.
A lot of the storms have been pounding my area(Leduc,Wetaskiwin,Camrose).
While I’m flooding the website(Extremwx.ca) with footage and photos the rest are feeling down about the lack of storms the their area(Edmonton)
I hope mother nature will fill in the gaps.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:50 pmWe haven’t had a half decent storm here in Edmonton since April 10th or 11th! Going on mid July and still no severe storms for the city yet? Cruddy dry weather. Still not enough heat yet, but that looks like it will arrive in the coming week. I hope August for sure makes up for the time lost!
July 6th, 2009 at 1:49 pmSo ironic were were having the same crap last year. although I think this year is worse in a lot of areas. although Wetaskiwin has been in an oasis of storms, along with Camrose and Red Deer
July 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pmNice catch!!!
July 7th, 2009 at 2:44 pm