July 10 – Storm damage from July 7 north of Olds
We took a little spin south today to see if we could spot where the entity came from that tore up Cottonwood road on the 7th. We started a mile west of the last spot I stopped for some video before fleeing that night, RR15 west of Bowden. Lots of tree snappage just a half mile from the video spot, and I’m thinking it didn’t happen too long after I peeled out of there.
South on RR15 there was continuous but sporadic tree damage, no big swaths taken down, concentrated in spots, everything blown to the northeast. 2 miles in we saw a hay shed blown apart to the north, the next farm had some interesting grain bin damage. It looked like one had been lifted and slammed across the top of five other bins from east to west. The first sign I had seen that this was not straight line wind heading only northeast. Another farm just south of that had the middle bin of 3 picked out and spun northwest.
That was the end of the damage we could see on 15, so we went back and over to RR20 for a look.
Other than a few more snapped trees and lots of downed branches, all we saw along that road was a severely displaced shed, a large one and quite new, that had an open south end for the wind to get into.
Searching for a needle in a haystack we toured around a bit to see if we could spy anything else interesting, but other than some pounded crops along #766 north of #27, a few more trees down at random spots, that was about it.
After seeing a few videos and photos from the time it was west of Bowden, and seeing some other photos from rr21 south of Cottonwood road, I think this had to be a tornado, a fairly big(wide)one, but also pretty weak for it’s size, most of the time anyway. The storm was heading north-northeast but this thing tracked in almost a straight line to the north-northwest from around Netook road for about 10 miles, almost to Dickson Dam.
I hope to hear something from EnviroCan about it.
Strathmore radar loop for July 7, 2011(2.4mb)
And another video, this is the whole day of taping, all 53 minutes of it crunched to less than 3 minutes, about 18.5x speed. Starts around 4:30 near Bergen and ends about 7:45 west of Bowden, a mile east of RR15.
If a survey were to be done, the rating estimate would be as follows:
Warehouse – exterior walls collapsed (WHB DOD 5) – 165 km/h (low end as it appeared to have been a weak building)
Metal barn – slid off (SBO DOD 6) – 155 km/h
Not sure how full the metal tank was, so cannot judge that.
CONCLUSION: my estimate for the rating is a high-end EF1. No conclusive evidence to suggest it was stronger.
July 15th, 2011 at 8:31 amThanks for stopping by Craig
Haven’t heard anything official yet, but I agree it will likely be rated an F1. However, I have seen photos of damage that is worse than what I have posted, taken down RR21 from Cottonwood road, that may get this an F2 rating.
A destroyed riding arena, 2x4s from it stuck in the walls and roof of a quonset to the south, a garage wiped clean off a pad, a large shop shifted on it’s foundation.
Still trying to figure out how I can post them, there is a youtube vid of a news story that covers the same area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dos9YOKR5sQ
July 15th, 2011 at 1:36 pm