Calgary, Canada Battered By Massive Hail, Floods

Lots of hail and hail damage last evening in Calgary, Canada. Note
the siding damage in the house across the street. Photo by
Cadenza Langan, via CBC

Imagine a quiet Saturday evening in your home.

Then imagine a storm destroying your car, breaking your windows and making mincemeat of your house siding all within a half hour.

That's what happened in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Saturday evening, when a storm, severe even by their standards, surely caused millions of dollars in damage. The main show with this event was just an incredible artillary battery of hail.

The area around Calgary, Canada is no stranger to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.

It's kind of a northern version of Denver, where severe storms develop along the Front Range of the Rockies when winds blow uphill from the east, giving a boost to the storms.

Calgary's topography is similar, so they can have destructive storms, too.

But this was one for the record books. Also the location this time was bad.  There are wide open plains in much of Alberta, and these storms often hit sparsely populated areas, so there's no great harm.

Calgary, however, has a population of 1.3 million, so there's plenty of homes, businesses, cars and other property that hail and flooding can target, if the storms roll over the city and not a few miles out into the Plains.

One of the many homes damaged by hail Saturday in Calgary, Canada.
Photo by Khalid Mahmood 

Which is what happened Saturday.  Not all the city was wrecked, but a good chunk of the northeastern part of Calgary was certainly smashed.

The wind driven hail, some golf ball sized or even tennis ball sized, came down in such density and force that it destroyed a huge number of cars, ripped the siding off countless homes and shattered many windows in some neighborhoods.

We don't have an estimate in the amount of damage yet.

Nearly 2 inches of rain mixed with the hail came down in just one hour, adding some damaging flash flooding to the hail wreckage.

Here are some videos from Calgary

This compilation shows a remarkable shot of large hailstones pounding cars in a badly flooded parking lot:



Aftermath video shows severe damage to siding and windows in a residential neighborhood:



More damage and wrecked plants and gardens in Calgary: