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  #1  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 9:52 AM
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Violent storm damages Edmonton's CN Tower

Only assuming since its an Edmonton topic this is the right spot, Mods feel free to move as needed:

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Originally Posted by The Vancouver Sun
Violent storm damages Edmonton's CN Tower



EDMONTON — Trees and power lines fell across the city Saturday night, felled by violent winds that were at one point strong enough to rip the bottom out of the floor of one downtown building, crushing several vehicles.

Around 10 o’clock, the severe weather tore down the awning of the CN Tower at 104th Avenue and 100th Street. The building has a second floor wider than its base, and the material that made up the overhang came crashing down on an SUV and a truck.

“On the first call it sounded like there were people in the cars, but they turned out to be empty,” said fire platoon chief Ron Norman.

No one was hurt and the building was evacuated. Onlookers braved pouring rain and, at times, hail, to gawk at the debris that littered the ground. The falling material dragged most of the “CN Tower” sign above the main doors down, leaving only the N, T, O and the W hanging by a wire.

Glass from the crash flew across 104th Avenue and scattered around the street.

Brian Danyluk was driving down the street just as the crash happened.

“The winds were just howling,” said Danyluk, who took pictures of the wreckage.

Gary Kuhn was at a concert in Winston Churchill Square when the winds kicked up.

“There were all kinds of things flying through the air; I guess it could have been debris from this,” he said, pointing at the mess.

Environment Canada meteorologist Blair Morrow said a gust front sent winds howling through the city at speeds up to 110 km/h.

“The thunderstorms produced the winds, so it was straight line winds just plowing through everything,” he said.

Saturday night, Environment Canada had no confirmed reports of tornadoes, and Morrow said that by midnight, the worst of it was over.

Still, the force of the storm kept the city’s emergency services hopping.

“We have just about every station out right now. At one point, dispatch told me they had 40 calls lined up. A lot of these are just people getting scared, a lot of trees come down, a lot of power lines down,” Norman said.

Epcor spokesman Tim LeRiche said the winds took out power poles and power lines all over the city, and said the situation sparked several fires. He said he couldn’t estimate the number of houses and businesses affected by outages, only that the storm’s impact was enormous.

“There are wires down all over the city,” he said late Saturday night. “We’ve got outages all over the city. We’ve called out extra crews, we’ve got as many guys out on the street as we can to deal with this.”

Ensuring public safety was paramount as crews were assigned to deal with the cleanup, which was expected to carry on into Sunday.

On Whyte Avenue, power outages saw bars and restaurants booting out their customers and locking their doors, according to one restaurant owner.

“The streets were full of people,” said Howie Silverman, co-owner of Dadeo Restaurant.

At his establishment, diners were told that if they were already eating, the meal was on the house, and if they didn’t have food yet “they weren’t getting any.” Then the restaurant, like every other business along the avenue, shut down for the night.

“Now the streets are empty. The entire avenue is black,” he said, about two hours after the power went out at 10 p.m.

“It’s creepy.”

Silverman said police were directing traffic, and keeping things calm. His concern was now for the food in his freezers and refrigerators, as he waited for the power to be turned back on.

For those inside, the storm was the talk of the Internet, with so many users on the microblogging site Twitter talking about it that the symbol used to denote Edmonton — #yeg — became one of the site’s top 10 “Trending Topics.”

Edmonton Journal

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
source

It looks like a terrorist attacked the CN Tower.

In all seriousness though, as a former Edmontonian myself, with several friends still living in the city, I only hope and pray that everyone was able to weather this storm and is safe and sound.
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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 1:22 PM
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Should we take bets on how long it will take TAWA to do the repairs?
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 2:22 PM
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It was pretty intense.. I live downtown in square104 with my apt facing 104 avenue and we watched (when the wind really start picking up) drywall sheets getting torn out of the Quest and blown eastwards.thank god no cars or people in the immediate area got hit by one of them. Still drywall debris all over 104ave and 105st intersection.
The sky was churning like I have never seen before. It was eerie.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 2:28 PM
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It was quite the wind storm that's for sure.

@basilbrush - I am somewhat nervous about this too, however, given that this is covered under insurance it will probably be fairly quick. I wish Tawa would sell that building to a more qualified owner.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 3:17 PM
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They were saying on the weather network that you guys also had a lot of lightning.
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  #6  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 3:54 PM
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We had a fair bit of lightning. Some hail too. The winds were strong where I was but knock all that down, it must have been some stronger winds downtown.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 5:07 PM
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This storm was nuts. Hurricane-speed winds were taking out trees and powerlines. A good chunk of the east side lost power, as well as a large swath of the south side, some of whom didn't get power back until 8:00 this morning. Crazy amounts of lightning, hail, sheets of rain.

All in all, it was fun.

Thankfully so far they're reporting few injuries, none serious.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 5:22 PM
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I haven't seen clouds like that since sitting in Commonwealth stadium watching the esks the same night as the Pine Lake Tornado. Strange colours, moving in all directions...i'm surprised nothing more came of it.

Here by the Derek G&CC we barely got any rain. The lighting, while intense, was far away. Sounds like my Grandpa still doesn't have power at his place near capilano.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 5:28 PM
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Just got back to the city. I looks like it was pretty crazy here too. We were camping out at Mink Lake and there were three of us acting as renforcment on our tent because the wind was about to collapse it.
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  #10  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 5:29 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by basilbrush View Post
Should we take bets on how long it will take TAWA to do the repairs?
2 years. That's my honest guess.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 6:00 PM
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we were watching it from 99ave/105st and there were some of the eeriest clouds i have ever seen.

one of them i swear was redish

the wind was so intense i had to bring in my balcony chairs and even my bbq was dancing across the balcony.

i have not seen lighting like that in many many years and was actually waiting to see funnels.

very sad about the CN though
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 6:03 PM
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  #13  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 6:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldrsx View Post
we were watching it from 99ave/105st and there were some of the eeriest clouds i have ever seen.

one of them i swear was redish

the wind was so intense i had to bring in my balcony chairs and even my bbq was dancing across the balcony.

i have not seen lighting like that in many many years and was actually waiting to see funnels.

very sad about the CN though
You weren't seeing anything my friend. I saw redish clouds too. I also saw some greenish clouds as well. It was rather eerie indeed.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 7:05 PM
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From the pictures it looks like the soffit was ripped of the overhang, that would take some pretty crazy wind. As bad as that storm was, just be happy you don't live in West Kelowna right now.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 7:28 PM
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Whoa, now THAT was a wild storm!!

I don't think I've ever seen a storm with such inky black and boiling clouds! The winds started blasting into full gear within seconds to the point where trees were bending at really crazy angles, then few seconds later, there was a cloudburst. As the big storm last night was approaching, I could see weird flashes lighting up the cloud base from time to time - I think they were transformers exploding. The power did go out for a second or two a couple of times in my area (Oliver).

I took these photos below around 8:40 pm and 9:20 pm last night, respectively. They were from the first set of storms which hit the city.

I believe this thing below was likely a supercell, a type of thunderstorm with a rotating updraft base. But the majority of rain, wind and lightning was in a separate bow echo/squall line behind me. This thing had lightning flashing in the clouds right in front of the updraft. This updraft base was quickly weakening at the time and probably also starting to merge with the bow echo to the north at the time.


From the same storm as above as it was retreating. I've never seen a cloud quite like this before. Weird.
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Last edited by CanadianCentaur; Jul 19, 2009 at 9:30 PM.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 7:33 PM
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Just got back from a ride along the river from Oliver to Goldbar.

There are a lot of downed trees. Holy cow. Huge old ones either ripped in half, or entirely uprooted. The trails along the southside aren't that bad, with only a small tree here or there. On the northside though, there are quite a few sections that are basically impassable, especially around the Dawson Bridge.

Crazy.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 8:06 PM
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That was not a supercell per se, but a classic bow echo, called a derecho.
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 8:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eternallyme View Post
That was not a supercell per se, but a classic bow echo, called a derecho.
You are correct - partly. The line of storms which was over the north side was indeed a bow echo. There was a cell not far from Devon and earlier, Drayton Valley, which was showing a hook-shaped echo and a distorted "triangular/heart" shape on radar at times - evidence that the storm had a rotating updraft. And the one in my pic was probably the one and same and likely a supercell, not a bow echo. As I said in my previous post, the bow echo was separate and behind me while I was taking that first photo.

Supercells can and do occur alongside bow echos, and they do sometimes evolve or merge into bow echos.

I've heard of the the term "derecho", but this seems to be used only in the US, as I've never seen it used outside the US, even in Canada.

I happen to have taken a screen grab of a radar image last night for an Australian weather forum. The large red blob SW of Edmonton was the one showing supercell characteristics on radar up to over an hour before this time frame, and it was already rapidly weakening closer to the time I took the first storm picture. But do note the bow echo approaching Edmonton in this radar image. This is nearly an hour before my first pic.
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Last edited by CanadianCentaur; Jul 19, 2009 at 8:47 PM. Reason: Added radar image
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  #19  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 8:23 PM
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That last storm was something else... I could see the rotating updraft before the strong gusts came... it was freaky.

I'd imagine a storm like this hits around 4-6 pm, we might have been looking at a tornado
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Old Posted Jul 19, 2009, 8:25 PM
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I've also heard of bow echo before... but not this term derecho

so I wiki it... heres the link for anyone else wondering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
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