What started as a warm, sunny day in Brooks, Alta., on Wednesday quickly took a turn when a nasty hailstorm ripped through, crumpling and knocking over power lines and damaging cars, homes and crops.
“All of a sudden, the winds came up, and it came in quick,” said Brooks Mayor John Petrie.
He said he watched from inside his house as “golf ball-sized” hail rained down, shredding leaves and perforating the siding on some of his neighbours’ homes in the city that’s about 160 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
Colleen Foisy said the hail sounded like gunshots as it hit her home in Brooks, calling the storm unlike anything she has seen in the 18 years she has lived there.
“The whole front of the house is destroyed,” said Foisy. “The front fence actually got ripped off of the cemented posts. My flowers in my garden got thrown around, branches from the trees. There’s hail damage all over my truck that’s only a year old. The cover to my boat got shredded.”
Images show some transmission towers near the city bent over by the storm, and others flattened to the ground. Fortis Alberta said crews returned to work at first light Thursday to assess damage and work on repairs. Roughly 1,000 customers were listed as still without power on the company’s website as of Thursday morning.
Environment Canada said a “fast-moving supercell tracked across southern Alberta bringing significant, damaging wind gusts and loonie- to golf ball-sized hail.” The department estimated peak wind gusts of 113 km/h in Brooks.
Highway 1 eastbound near Brooks remained closed Thursday with a detour via Highway 36, according to Alberta 511, with one lane open westbound on Highway 1.
The Brooks Fire Department says it was called to eight incidents, including motor vehicle collisions. In a post on Facebook, the department says the priority was downed power lines in the area of Highway 1 and Highway 36 in Newell County, and getting people trapped in their vehicles to safety.
Truck picked up, spun around by storm
That’s the same area Coleman Waddell was driving just after 5 p.m. Wednesday, trying to beat the storm and get home to Brooks. Instead, he found himself right in the middle of it.
“I was driving north, and all of a sudden the wind picked up, threw my truck around, and I was facing south,” said Waddell.
He said hail had already blown out the windows on the driver’s side of his truck when he drove into a ditch for cover, then hail smashed open the windows on the passenger side.
He got out and lay down beside the truck, holding onto its running board as the storm passed, anxiously fearing his truck could flip over onto him.
“Felt like an hour, but was probably only 15 minutes,” said Waddell, who was left with bruises from the ordeal.
He said while he was worried for his own safety, he was more worried for his wife, who was driving about three minutes ahead of him. But she arrived home safely, with no hail damage at all to her vehicle.
Riley Hass, a longtime storm chaser, watched as Wednesday night’s storm accelerated from what he described as a “classic Alberta foothills supercell” to dangerous winds whipping at highway speeds.
While driving through the storm, he soon found he had to pull over for his own safety due to the powerful winds and lack of visibility around him.
“I could the feel whole frame of the vehicle shaking around,” Hass said. “There was at least once or twice where I could feel the platform of the vehicle lift a little bit and then go back down.
“It was something I haven’t seen in Alberta in quite some time.”
Winds strong enough to nearly blow over my vehicle..please take this storm seriously. If you are in the path, take action NOW.<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/abstorm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#abstorm</a> <a href=”https://t.co/Ed2l2tMIl1″>pic.twitter.com/Ed2l2tMIl1</a>
—@HassRiley61869
2 animals killed at fun farm
The hailstorm knocked down fences at White Barn Fun Farm, west of Brooks, sending animals scattering, according to the farm’s owner and manager Melissa Jackson. She said two animals were killed by debris, and a horse and some birds were injured.
“Sadly we lost a Bactrian camel, five years old, and a pony that were best friends, and they died together,” Jackson said.
She said they are in “survival mode” as they work to lay the animals to rest, handle insurance and clean up the messy aftermath. She does not anticipate they will reopen to customers this season, which would typically run until October.
“It’s a lot of fences to repair. The barn is wrecked; the paint’s off of it. The windows are smashed out of it,” said Jackson. “And emotionally, we are just very distraught.”
