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:

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:

All Hail Boston! And Other Cities That Got Pounded By Wild Storms

A main tries to flee through the large
hail falling on Boston yesterday.  

Yesterday was indeed a wild day in Massachusetts, and in New Hampshire. And Maine. And Rhode Island.

Waves of severe storms rolled through the region all day. Tornado warnings were rampant across Massachusetts in the afternoon. There was a waterspout in Boston Harbor, but no confirmations yet of tornadoes.

However, meteorologists will surely go out today to look at damage paths in southern and eastern New England to find any evidence of tornadoes.

The real story was the hail, which hit many eastern New England communities hard. Lots of reports of golf ball sized hail or even bigger. I wonder how many thousands of cars are dented this morning.

Probably many thousands.

There will be far fewer severe storms in New England today, but some areas will get some hail. A cold pool of air aloft will encourage storms, and since it's so cool upstairs, hail won't melt as much as usual for August on the way down.

Here are a few cool videos: A couple from Boston, and at least one from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which had its own problems with hail, flooding and storms on Tuesday.

Television station WCVB in Boston has this great time lapse of the city getting swallowed up by the severe storm:



Next, somebody took a video of large hail hitting a Boston roof. The first few seconds show it falling in normal time, then they go into a really cool slow motion video of the falling hail:




Up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the hailstorm there looked like this:




And oh, hell, I'll throw in a video of a small tornado passing over a house in Florida this week:

Well, THIS Dog Likes The Summer Snow

This dog didn't exactly complain about snow
in Calgary this week.  

As you may have heard, this week has brought rare summer snow to Calgary, Alberta Canada, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and even Denver, Colorado got into the act last night.

A lot of people in the "Snowtember" snow zone grumbled about the early slap in the face from winter, but not this young dog who experienced snow for the first time in his life in Calgary this week.

He's a rescue dog from California, so he missed out on snow the last two winters.

Looks like he's going to like winters, though. Watch and be cheered:

Three Days Of Summer Snow Make A Mess Of Calgary

Workers try to remove snow from a Calgary golf course
in anticipation of a golf tournament this weekend. Photo by
Stuart Dryden, Calgary Sun.  

It's been snowing for three days now in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and as you can imagine, it's really taking a toll.

The big problem is the trees haven't begun to lose their leaves yet, since it's still technically summer. The snow is piling up on the leaves, weighing down the trees and they're breaking left and right. 

Then you have the tableau of snow covered boats still docked at the lakes. (Again, still summer!)

Plus you get the usual litany of slippery roads, car accidents, slips and falls on icy sidewalks and events being canceled.

 They're even trying to clear snow off a golf course so they can play the Spruce Meadows Masters Tournament in Calgary this coming weekend.

According to the Weather Channel, Calgary had 4.6 inches of snow Monday and another half inch today.

This photo wasn't taken last winter.
It's this week, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  

Believe it or not, that's not a record early season snowfall. The earliest four inch snowfall on record in Calgary was on September 6, 1972,  says the Weather Channel.

On August 25-26, 1900 the city had a two-day total snowfall of around four inches. And a dusting of snow covered the Calgary ground on July 23, 1918, adds the Weather Channel.

The cold air causing the snow is heading across the international border into the United States, so the states will get some snow as well.

There's a winter storm warning for higher elevations of Montana, and even somewhat lower elevation cities like Great Falls might pick up a couple inches tonight.

There's also a winter weather advisory for tonight and tomorrow in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where they might get three to six inches of snow.

Yikes!!

Everybody has an opinion. Someone leaves
their thoughts on this week's snow in Calgary.  

The cold will spread south and east across the Great Lakes, Plains, Ohio Valley and East Coast over the the next few days.

None of these places will get snow, but frosts and freezes are possible in some of these areas.  

Meanwhile, the the great relief of people in Calgary, winter hasn't permanently settled in. Environment Canada forecasts a high of 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) on Saturday, 63 on Sunday and 75 next Monday.

Meanwhile, here's a chilling video of a guy's drive around Calgary during the snow. The trees don't look so good.