More than 200,000 acres of crop have been damaged after two storms skipped across Alberta, wiping out the hopes of many farmers for a good crop, said the head of the province’s crop insurance program.
“It was very severe damage,” said Merle Jacobson with AFSC, formerly the Agriculture Financial Services Corp.
The first storm, on Aug. 11, started at Water Valley, west of Olds, and continued through Olds, Stettler and Coronation to Wainwright on the east side of the province. In some areas the storm was 50 kilometres wide.
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Jacobson said more than 1,000 hail claims would cover “well over 100,000 acres.” The Olds office had more than one-third of its claims from that storm. Another office had “too many acres to add up.”
“Most producers have reported very severe damage,” said Jacobson.
The second storm, on Aug. 12, started at Evansburg, west of Edmonton, and peaked at Wabamum, where a tornado may have touched down. The storm continued north of Edmonton to Thorhild, Smoky Lake and St. Paul in Alberta’s northeast.
Jacobson estimated the 800 claims from the second storm will cover 70,000-100,000 acres.
It has been more than 10 years since two storms have ruined so much crop, said Jacobson. These storms were unusual because there was little rain, just “great big, hard hail.”
Jack Craig said it took less than an hour to ruin 450 acres of his crop. Damage on his land northeast of Olds ranges from 50-90 percent.
“Everything went down the tubes.”
Joe Wecker of Olds watched from his garage as the storm dropped golf ball-sized hail on 4,500 of his 6,500 acres of land.
“You do everything to get the crop up and then, in five minutes, everything is gone,” said Wecker, who added that a combination of drought and hail have ruined his crops for the last four years.
The hail also smashed windows in his house and machinery shed. Damage in the field ranged from five to 100 percent.
