One of the most repeated impressions about comparing something in North America with something back home is just how much bigger everything is, from skylines to mountains to cars and so on. This observation is even applicable to the weather it seems. At about 1:45 this morning, all of a sudden a howling gale started to blow through my apartment, much as it had on Saturday evening when it played such havoc with the Stampeders game down the road at McMahon Stadium. I knew there had been a severe thunderstorm warning earlier in the evening, but nothing had materialised before I went to bed and thought nothing more of it. I have seen thunderstorms here before that were pretty spectacular, but nothing on the scale that was to imminently follow.
As I got out of bed to close the windows to stop the wind-tunnel effect, the bedroom was illuminated by lightning, followed by a huge clap of thunder. The sound and light show which followed over the next 45 minutes was jaw dropping; hundred kilometer-an-hour winds, torrential rain, huge hailstones the size of coins and the sky illuminated for seconds at a time. A couple of times, the lightning was green! Whole neighbourhoods ended up without power and many trees were blown over. The pictures of hail damage to the largely wooden houses here show just what forces nature can summon when it feels like it. Here's a Youtube video of last night, which doesn't really do it justice (particularly from a noise point of view).
Typically, as I write this, it has started up again and I have flinched more than once during the writing of this post. Living in a 16-storey building on a day like today gives you pause for thought when the local evening newspaper shows photos of lightning strikes on apartment buildings in the city centre...!
As I got out of bed to close the windows to stop the wind-tunnel effect, the bedroom was illuminated by lightning, followed by a huge clap of thunder. The sound and light show which followed over the next 45 minutes was jaw dropping; hundred kilometer-an-hour winds, torrential rain, huge hailstones the size of coins and the sky illuminated for seconds at a time. A couple of times, the lightning was green! Whole neighbourhoods ended up without power and many trees were blown over. The pictures of hail damage to the largely wooden houses here show just what forces nature can summon when it feels like it. Here's a Youtube video of last night, which doesn't really do it justice (particularly from a noise point of view).
Typically, as I write this, it has started up again and I have flinched more than once during the writing of this post. Living in a 16-storey building on a day like today gives you pause for thought when the local evening newspaper shows photos of lightning strikes on apartment buildings in the city centre...!
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