July 19
Still waiting.
Edmonton and surrounding area got the show yesterday, in a big way.
After waiting all afternoon in 18C dewpoints around here for something to explode off the foothills, around 4pm the show began west of Drayton Valley with a good sized storm that rolled over Drayton and headed for Edmonton. EC was on top of it and had watches out early, then were busy issuing warnings for the rest of the day. Wall clouds, golf ball hail and heavy rain were seen as the storm rumbled along, until just southwest of Edmonton when it hit something and instantly flared out into a huge squall, packing 100kmh+ winds that tore a swath of destruction all the way through Edmonton from edge to edge and beyond to the northeast.
Thousands of downed trees, snapped off or uprooted, power out to thousands of folks mostly from trees falling on power lines, and the list goes on. Guesstimations of 80,000 people were at the Edmonton exhibition when the bluster came through, sounded like quite the panic from the news, with terrified crowds of people scrambling for cover as the wind and lightning came howling in under a big nasty looking shelf. Fun!
Local storm chaser Brad Derzaph took off after the beast and met up with it around Drayton Valley, then followed it back to Edmonton, scoring some nice photos. The guys from ExtremeWX in Edmonton were also following this one and have some nice shots up on their page.
Kenny from Edmonton sent us these photos of the storm as it was coming in.
I couldn’t go after this one and had to watch from afar, but it was still a beautiful beast to watch from here. I would have put a fiver on something crawling out of the hills last night to give us a show, but we got nothing more than a huff of wind out of the entire day.
Today we missed the boat again and the goodies went south, lighting up over Airdrie and dropping a hail swath from there southeast across Chestermere and off into the prairie.
Not a drop of rain here since our soaking two weeks ago and it is getting very dry again just as the crops are heading out beautifully. They might have to wait, I’m hearing all sorts of things about a monster ridge getting ready to take over….
What a beast!
July 20th, 2009 at 10:14 amI was able to get some video as this cell hit the Taste of Edmonton festival Saturday night. As an amateur storm chaser, this only improved an already great evening out. lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l0alo5rh30
July 20th, 2009 at 1:53 pmWow those clouds are really moving!
July 20th, 2009 at 9:00 pmAssume you are looking north there?
crazy stuff, thanks for sharing
Actually, I was facing west at first, then south at the end.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pmI was in the County of Smoky Lake near the town of Warspite
July 29th, 2009 at 1:18 pmand seen the two storms roll in.Not much in the way of rain
and we did not get the wind but the lightning was awsome.
shot 25 relitivly good shots on my digital cameras.best storm
i seen in Alberta,even when i lived there.
Colin McIntyre
Victoria BC