By Sheldon Spackman

Severe storms bring rain, high winds and hail to central Alberta

Jul 14, 2018 | 9:09 AM

Severe thunderstorms moved through parts of Alberta on Friday bringing, rain, strong winds and hail in many areas.

Environment Canada Meteorologist Heather Pimiskern says these storms were produced along a cold front and generally moved eastward in the region between Edmonton and Calgary.

“Some of them were quite severe, we had hail reports in a number of regions,” says Pimiskern. “The largest size of hail that we received was baseball to softball in Ponoka around 6:00 p.m. last evening. But the size of hail ranged anywhere from nickel up to the baseball – softball sized.”

Other communities reporting hail on Friday included Crestomere with loonie sized hail, Alix – golf ball to tennis ball sized, Stettler – ping pong ball sized, Vermillion – golf ball sized, Bowden – golf ball sized, Trochu – walnut sized and nickel sized hail found in Olds.

Pimiskern says the series of storms that passed through also produced very potent wind gusts.

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“That gust front stretched all the way from the storm which was centred in and around the Red Deer region, southward,” she explains. “That actually caused some high winds to be experienced through southern Alberta last evening. The highest wind gusts we saw was near Bellshill, around 105 km/hr and Calgary International Airport also saw winds above 90 km/hr last evening.”

Other communities that experienced severe winds also included Beiseker – 93 km/hr, Crestomere – 91 km/hr and Strathmore which saw winds gust up to 80 km/hr.

The highest rainfall amounts on Friday fell near Crestomere though according to Pimiskern.

“That was about 34 mm of rain over the last 24 hours,” she states. “That would possibly include the storm system that moved through central regions early Friday morning.”

Pimiskern reminds Albertans they’re always looking for weather reports, saying there are a number of ways people can report weather to Environment Canada.

“One is through Twitter using #ABStorm,” says Pimiskern. “Another way is to directly email us at ec.storm.ec@canada.ca. Both are monitored by meteorologists throughout the day and overnight and so if there are any reports that people have, they’re able to give that to us, even a couple of days after the fact.”