Wild Night!

Last night there were reports of a tornado just northeast of Bow Island touching down and headed east towards Medicine Hat at 65 km/hr. The kids are still at the farm and spent the evening hiding out in the basement of mama & papa's house.


This is what we saw to the west after reading the reports on the Internet and talking to Carolyn's parents.


As it approached I noticed the clouds were really blowing around, I then noted that some were going north and some were going south, meaning a possible tornado!


This was the sky to the south, a patch of blue framed by more scary looking clouds.


To the north things were really ominous and there was lighting shooting out in all directions, the wildest was the sheet lightning that was shooting across the clouds above us.


And then the wind came, I estimate it got up to 100+ km/hr straight out of the north, if the trampoline wasn't anchored down it would of come right through the dining room window, the uprights were flexing so much I thought they were going to bend in half.
At one point the barbecue blew over and was resting against one of the basement windows, when I went to go outside to move it I couldn't unlock the deadbolt on the patio door because of the pressure from the high winds blowing on it so I decided to leave it. I went back to the dining room window and was watching the wind when all of sudden the barbecue shot straight out from the back of the house and was only stopped by the natural gas hose attached to the side of the house. Not wanting the gas line to get damaged I braved the elements and detached the hose and threw a cement block on the barbecue so it wouldn't become airborne.

When I left for work this morning I had a quick look around for any damage, the only thing we had was some trim was loose on the side of the roof and a couple of the metal poles for Carolyn's solar lights got bent, other than that we were lucky once again. Some of our neighbours weren't so lucky, some lost shingles and a trampoline was folded in half. Burdett, Bow Island & Seven Persons seemed to have got hit the worst with missing roofs, downed trees and blown down crops. The news was reporting trampolines blowing across the highway and through residential areas, a Porsche was blown over in Southridge (an area we used to live in in Medicine Hat), grain bins were in the ditches along Highway 3 and several roofs were blown off.

Tonight they had more storm warnings so we decided to go to the baseball game in the Hat; in the 4th inning it started to sprinkle, then ran, then downpour, then hail. The game was cancelled and will resume tomorrow night!!!!