Tornado Touchdown!

Tornados and hail hit the Edmonton area late Tuesday afternoon, while torrential rain filled the streets of Calgary.

Yesterday, June 5th, at around 4 o'clock a tornado touched down just south of Stony Plain which is just outside the west end of Edmonton. The storm moved west-southwest at 40 km/h and generated winds of up to 50 km/h. Lucky for us it didn't move southeast or it would be headed strait for us! Edmonton's north and west sides had flash floods after getting 50mm of rain in just half an hour. Homes were damaged and businesses had to close due to flooding. There was marble sized hail and lots of lightning too. Store owners in the area reported water knee-deep, with rainwater reaching car doors. Some people that were interviewed on the news, jumped out of their car windows and were swimming in the flooded streets.

Environment Canada also reported nickel-sized hail between Calgary and Red Deer. In Calgary, two people were rushed to hospital after a lightning strike, and students at the John G. Diefenbaker High School were evacuated after their high-school roof partially collapsed as the rainstorm slammed their city. The fire department was swamped with calls as floating cars and washed-out streets stalled traffic and water flooded homes and businesses.

Anyway, I took some of that information out of newspaper articles and some just from what I saw on the news. We were lucky in the area where we live here in the southwest part of the city. All we experience was strong winds, thunder and rain. It was a bit scary when Environment Canada issued a tornado warning though because we are not far at all from were the tornado touched down.