Just before 8 p.m. July 16, the mercury in the thermometer outside
Roxanne Paslawski’s house had soared past the 30 C level. Twenty
minutes later it was registering 10 C.
The huge temperature drop was caused by the worst storm Paslawski and
her husband Eugene can remember in 30 years of farming. The storm
clouds delivered 64 millimetres of rain and a mess of hail to the
couple’s farm near Glidden, Sask.
“They were very strange clouds. Some were really dark and one was
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shaped like a bagel. You could see the blue sky through it and around
it and I believe that it was the one full of hail.”
They were pelted by the ping-pong ball sized hail that accompanied the
storm while attempting to get their horses into the barn.
By the time the thunderstorm had moved on, the “powdery” dry dirt on
their drought-ravaged farm in west-central Saskatchewan had turned to
mud. Floating on top of the mud were white balls of hail. Paslawski
described the scene as brown tapioca pudding.
Twenty minutes later the farm was engulfed by a fog so thick she
couldn’t see to the end of the driveway.
“It was really weird,” said Paslawski.
The weather system that caused that storm generated 372 watches and
warnings from Environment Canada as it tracked east across the Prairies.
“It has been a busy week,” said meteorologist Jay Anderson.
A hot, humid air mass fuelled thunderstorms that started in Alberta on
July 16 and tracked across to Manitoba, where they petered out on July
19.
Anderson received 25 reports of severe hail damage ranging from
nickel-sized hail to baseball-sized boulders southeast of North
Battleford, Sask.
Some of the highest humidity readings ever recorded in Saskatchewan
left that province with the fiercest storms and the most damage.
Despite this most recent system, it has been a mild year for severe
weather, said the meteorologist. It is the middle of storm season and
only 14 tornadoes have been reported. Typically there are 43 such
events in the summer months.
“It’s so dry that there’s no fuel for it to thunderstorm,” said
Anderson.
For those like Terry Motz who faced the fury unleashed by the hot,
humid weather, it has been anything but a mild year.
When the storm hit, the Glidden, Sask., farmer was changing a tire on
his baler along the road between Kindersley and his farm. He had three
lug nuts on when the first hailstone hit the baler.
“It was almost like somebody shot a cap gun off beside me.”
Motz put on a baseball helmet he had found earlier in the ditch and
finished the tire. He then drove back to his farm amidst thunderbolts
and static electricity that caused the hair on his arms to stand on end.
“It was almost like you were sitting at an airport and there was jets
coming in continuously.”
The clouds above looked unusual.
“There was a really puffy, pillowy centre and it just kept churning and
churning and churning.”
At first he thought the storm would bypass his farm, but it didn’t.
Rain and hail pelted down on his property for more than an hour.
“I’ve never witnessed anything like it in my life,” said Motz.
Hail stripped the finish off the masonite siding on his house and beat
the stain out of his fence. It sounded like machine gun fire as it
bounced off a nearby hall in Glidden.
“It’s just like somebody came through with a sandblaster.”
Motz lost 60 percent of his poplars, his garden is now non-existent and
his crops are “just totally devastated.”
West of Glidden 1,000 acres of crop were still under water a few days
after the storm. Runoff was flowing so fast that it lifted bales out of
a ditch and swept them through a nearby cement culvert.
The area where Motz farms has been languishing under severe drought
conditions.
“Now we’re even more devastated, only this time we got a little
moisture to go with it,” said the farmer.
“It’s amazing the change that it has made in the ground. Before,
walking around on the ground was like walking on cement and now walking
on the ground is like walking on cushioned carpet.”
Paslawski said the moisture that accompanied the hail was welcomed with
open arms on their farm.
“If this is the only way that we’re going to get moisture, then send us
another 10 storms,” said Paslawski.
