Wild and Wacky Weather

Yesterday gave us some strange and, at times, scary weather.

We woke up to a lovely 11 degrees above zero and some winds from the West. This isn't uncommon since we live in an area that often gets chinooks blown in from the mountains.

But by noon, there were shingles flying, our trampoline dancing in the wind and our windows rattling.

  At about 1pm, the radio and tv were interrupted with an emergency broadcast due to the severe winds.  Calgary's downtown core was shut down to all pedestrian and vehicle traffic because windows were being blown out of high rises and debris was flying everywhere. Wind speeds in the downtown were recorded at 149km/hr- Category 1 Hurricane Force winds!

Trees were uprooted in Crossfield, store fronts ripped off, siding torn away and many shingle-less houses were left to then deal with the hail and then snow that came through later in the evening.

As far as we have been able to tell, our house is ok, with minimal or no damage to our shingles and siding. It was a scary afternoon though. If it had been a summer month, you can bet I would have been hiding out in the basement!

In this picture you can see the shingles of one of our neighbours' house being ripped off. They suffered quite a bit of damage, with the yard and field behind us being dotted with shingles from their house.
The tall house at the top of the picture is ours- no damage is visible. :)

 These houses are about a block down the street from us to the South.

When we arrived at school this morning, this was what we saw:

(notice that the photos from yesterday there was no snow- we got this snow overnight, before anyone had time to fix their roofs)

You can watch a news clip of some other damage around the Crossfield area here

Thankfully we didn't suffer any major damage and more importantly, we are all safe!