Alberta Weather

It is dry, hot, cold, windy, muggy, hailing, raining, snowing and there is a tornado watch on today. I thought we had changable weather in Thunder Bay, but Alberta wins the prize for unpredictable weather and the risk of weather warnings and disasters always on the horizon.

Below is a photo of the sunroof of my car after a TORNADO touched down in Red Deer on July 4. Environment Canada confirmed today that is was indeed a tornado. Thankfully (unlike most Albertans) I had glass insurance to pay for this to be fixed!

See this link for the story - Storm upgraded Red Deer Advocate • Jul-22-2009 Central Alberta likely experienced its first tornado of the summer on July 4 when a thunderstorm roa… more

In Penhold where I live, we had hail - about 20 k south of the tornado. I didn't realize the hail had broken my sunroof, until July 5 when I parked in Calgary to attend the Stampede. My friend suggested I close my window because it looked like rain, and the glass just exploded into the back. Thankfully I was traveling without dogs.
Last Sunday at a herding trial in High River, people who live in this area were saying that the big clouds and muggy weather meant a storm was on its way. I left around 3 PM to drive up to my Schutzhund Club and on the way (80 km from the trial north to the club which is east of the airport) I saw this ominous cloud from Hwy 9 near Langdon.

I drove for about 5 more minutes, and this is what the cloud now looked like...and I thought for sure it was going to turn into a funnel cloud. I took this photo (below) then took off as fast as I could for the north, where the sky was clear. I drove through a horrible rainfall but emerged into clear weather. The cloud did go south to hover over the trial, but in the end, it was just a nasty storm cloud.

On a positive note, rain and humidity are GREAT for tracking!!!