July 30 – Sundre Tornado
From the Edmonton Journal: (Link)
“Environment Canada has confirmed a tornado touched down 25 kilometres west-northwest of Sundre at. The storm has now been downgraded to a severe thunderstorm warning.
According to early reports, no one was hurt and no property damaged after the tornado made contact with the ground in a field near James River Bridge.”
Strathmore RADAR loop(2.5mb)
I am finding it hard to dig up details about this confirmed touchdown, but it appears to have been out west of Bearberry near the bridge there, close to a nudist colony where nobody saw anything. 
We had just left Sylvan Lake after finishing up some business there and were near Benalto at the time this was going on, but this thing must have been behind the dark core from our veiwpoint.
After a quick pit stop at home I headed south to see what was going on, watching a real mean looking thing tracking down the foothills west of #22. I decided not to sample what looked like a dangerous hail core as it was going over Water Valley and headed for Didsbury and the 2a route.
It really didn’t look that appealing until about 6pm when it developed a huge wall cloud as it was crossing #22 near Bottrell. Unfortunately I was stuck on the QE2 in driving rain with Friday night long weekend traffic and couldn’t get a shot or even another look till the other side of Airdrie. It was looking disorganized by the time I got a good look again, but was still packing a very ugly looking core which I stayed well away from.
It looked like it might want to do something again west of Balzac around 6:20, but could not. 50-60kmh NE wind was cutting across it(outflow from storm to the NE?), lots of little spinny bits and scud bombs, even some good large scale rotation at times, but it just couldn’t organize itself. Stiff outflow winds to the south were kicking up huge dust plumes from all the construction sites on the northwest side of Calgary which probably freaked a few people out.
I decided to skirt the obvious hail core to the south and came back in behind it on Big Hill Springs road, finding some good drifts of pea to dime sized hail near the park turnoff, then a good 6 inches of it on the highway a few miles east, on the east side of the Nose Creek valley. I didn’t see any crop damage and only a light shredding of poplar leaves. Not one funnel did I see all day and only 18 photos taken.
Watching the hills again today.
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Your photos are awesome, we watched about this storm on the news here this evening (vancouver island). I am originally from the Olds/Sundre area so your photos and stories have been very interesting to read and see. Thank you.
July 31st, 2010 at 11:18 pmI’m starting to think I should avoid heading to the cabin on the August long weekend! Our place is across the river from the nudists (they’re not nearly as friendly as you might expect!) and we too had only a light sprinkling of rain and no major wind to speak of. Hard to believe it was that close! Much better than our experience last year: http://timosborne.ca/2009/08/06/the-storm/
August 2nd, 2010 at 7:02 pmThanks Shelley
It’s a good year to be in Sundre if you like storms!
Not such a great year to be a bedding plant tho.
Hey Tim you got room for another camper next Aug long weekend? Jeez that is the place to be!
If the nader had formed hour later I would likely have been sitting right under it. Bad timing!
Finally saw the pic that may have confirmed the touchdown, it’s a nado for sure. Not sure why the reports were saying it was 25km wsw of Sundre, James River Bridge is 13km North.
http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/world/Tornado+touches+down+near+Sundrie/3343584/story.html
August 3rd, 2010 at 1:54 pmHey Tim,
Was that the storm that caused all the massive hail damage last year?
August 4th, 2010 at 9:34 amI was out west on Sunday August 7/10 taking pictures of wild horses. As I travelled the back roads I came into a valley that comes off the South James River. Here the road was blocked by fallen trees. When I got higher up you could see a complete path of destruction that was 1/2 mile wide by 2 miles long, where there was not a tree left standing. Trees with trunks over 2′ in diameter were broken off like twigs. In this twisted and strewn mess there was not a tree left standing. There are two small herds of wild horses in that valley and I do hope that they and all the other creatures lived through this.
August 10th, 2010 at 7:28 pmDean, yes that was indeed the storm that caused the massive hail damage.
August 17th, 2010 at 2:54 pmSo, was this one weather modification?
July 7th, 2011 at 10:31 pmMary it was pure foothills magic, nobody got a chance to modify it
July 7th, 2011 at 11:23 pm