Another Look At $1 Billion Damage Calgary Hail Storm

The morning after: A man stands amid hail drifts in front of a
Calgary home seriously damaged by hail/. Photo by
Jim Wells/Post Media

Yes, I understand Calgary, Canada is a long way away and I've already brought up in a previous post the massive hail storm and flash flood they had there this past Saturday.

I'm still wowed by the photos and videos that came out of that storm, so I'll share a couple here.  It's a    relatively slow weather news day anyway.

Videos are at the bottom of this post.

Damages from the storm could run to near  $1 billion dollars, that's billion with a "b"  So it was a huge disaster by any measure.

   The Calgary Sun says tens of thousands of homes were damaged in the storm. Pretty much every car not inside a garage in the northeastern part of the city was totaled.

"I would be very shocked if this isn't a top-five insurable cost event in the history of Canada," Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said. It's certainly the worst damage the city of Calgary has seen from a single storm.

I think the flooding was made worse by the hail. The ice, and leaves shredded by the hail, clogged catch basins.

Hail storms can be among the costliest weather disasters possible.   They cover bigger areas than a tornado would. If they hit an urban area, they might not destroy many buildings, but thousands of structures end up with damage, sometimes severe. Thousands of cars are usually wrecked, too.

Some examples of costly U.S. hail storms include a Phoenix, Arizona area hailstorm in 2010 that tcaused $2.8 billion in damage and a St. Louis area hail storm that cost $2.2 billion.

Hail and severe thunderstorms are common in and around Calgary but this was a whole new level.

More videos:

Here's a damage video taken the morning after the storm. Note how much hail is left on the ground surrounding the destroyed cars and heavily damaged houses:



A glimpse of the storm in progress:


A CBC News  summary of the storm: