Things That Make You Go WOW; The Windstorm of '04

If you live around the Edmonton area you no doubt saw the windstorm that came through the area on Sunday. What a wind!! I have never seen anything like that before. It's the speed in which it came on that is so amazing. It went from a dead calm to fierce wind in a matter of seconds. Environment Canada said the wind was around 100mph and I believe it.

Well, here is my tale of surviving the Windstorm of '04...I was out putting pop cans and bottles in bags in a bright, sunny, calm setting when I started to hear this roar. I didn't really think about it but then it started to get louder and louder and louder. Planes sometimes go over our house so I stopped what I was doing to go around the shed to see what the noise was. Well, there was no plane. There was some clouds and then...bang!! It hit like one of those shockwave scenes you see in movies. The trees started swaying like I've never seen them before. I saw one tree near the house fall. I saw the top of one of the spruce trees lose it's top. I saw branches falling everywhere. But then I noticed the most disturbing thing about the wind.... all my pop cans and bottles were swirling around all over the place like they were in their own little tornado. Things became quite comical after that. Here I am running around trying to get all these cans put back in a big box. The kids came out to see what had happened and they helped me get the cans and bottles rounded up and put away. Then the hail came with a bit of rain for good measure. Then the power went out. That was around 1:20pm. We didn't get power back until 8:45pm. Thank goodness we heat our house with wood or it might have been a tad cool.

Before it got dark I went for a walk in our little forest and saw quite a few trees down. Looks like I have some work to do and lots of firewood also. At least something positive came out of the Windstorm of '04.