Alberta’s Tornado Belt

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Some of the worst weather I have ever encountered in this province happens on our drive from Calgary to Edmonton or vice versa. You get to around Sundre/Bowden/Red Deer and it seems that you enter a belt of weather that is unlike anywhere else I have been in this province.

Sometimes, like last weekend, it takes nerves of steel to travel through it.

We hit a massive storm around the Sundre area which slowed traffic to a crawl on the Queen Elizabeth highway. And that takes some weather to slow people down on that road, let me tell you. People were pulled over to the side to wait it out, we were traveling a mere 50 km a hour with the wipers on high and didn’t pull over because I just wanted to get through it instead of waiting for a twister to hit.

I have this fear/fascination with tornadoes. Anyone who lived in Edmonton during the massive F4 that hit the city still, in the back of their mind, knows that it danged well could happen again.

The Red Deer area has had more than their share of twisters, some causing damage like the Pine Lake tornado and others just touching down. It’s becoming a yearly event that funnel clouds are spotted in this area.

Which makes me hate driving through it during summer thunderstorms.

I spend the whole time panicking, quietly, as to not upset the kids, but panicking nonetheless.

The clouds are just fiercely ugly around there, they get so low, so dark, so evil looking that I watch them like a hawk the entire time we drive through.

Sometimes I will grab Mike’s arm and quietly shriek – a quiet shriek can be done, my friend, most assuredly- that this is the one that’s gonna churn and twist!

I have actually witnessed a confirmed funnel cloud before,when I was in high school walking home with a friend, Christine, I do recall.  Or was it Kandice? We looked at the cloud…thought it looked funny…then heard later that yes, funnel clouds were spotted above Airdrie.

It looked a lot like the picture below. A small little plume coming straight down out of the clouds in an abnormal way. Which is why I kinda quietly shrieked. But we were on our way out of that mess of weather thankfully.

Mr Magpie has spotted a funnel cloud driving through the area and it was confirmed later on by Environment Canada that there were several spotted that day last summer. Unfortunately it was a crappy picture on his Black Berry, he’s never “packing” the photography equipment like I perpetually am.

And this would be how concerned my children were.

My son looked up from his DS about ten minutes out of the rain and said “Huh, it’s stopped raining?”.

Yes dear, and your mother had 5 panic attacks, a heart failure or two and one good freak out.

Oh boy, I have months of travel back and forth through the tornado belt, I can’t wait!

Love,

The Love to Panic Magpie