*Web Exclusive* Hail storm crosses east side of Flagstaff County

As residents in Killam and Strome kept their eyes on an ominous black cloud on Thursday around 5 p.m., residents near Daysland took a terrible beating with hail and heavy rainfall causing problems for anyone travelling Highway 13.

Katie Perrault was on her way home just before 5 p.m. on Highway 13 when she ran into what appeared to be a normal rainstorm just west of Daysland, but soon heavy rain and pea-size hail forced her to pull over until visibility improved.
As the storm lessened, Perrault thought that it would be okay to continue, but as she came out of Daysland, she once again hit heavy rain and hail.
“There was about two inches of hail on the highway,” Perrault said, “and what looked like four inches of rain along with it.”
Perrault said she and seven other vehicles pulled off the highway between Daysland and the Heisler highway to again wait out the hail.
She said both storms had pea-sized hail, and high winds, but she doesn’t remember seeing any lightning.
So much hail fell that the ditches were filling up, with water and hail, leaving the side of the road looking like it had snowed.
“I couldn’t tell you if there was any thunder or not,” she laughed, “the hail was making so much noise it was like continuous thunder.”
Perrault said the temperature as she left Camrose was 24 degrees, but when she checked it again during her second stop, about 20 or 25 minutes later, it had dropped to seven degrees.
Once she was again able to continue, turning south towards Heisler, Perrault said that within five minutes of driving it was like the storm hadn’t occurred at all.

CP Staff member Karen Ruzicka said she was travelling north on Highway 36 watching a huge black cloud to the west when she heard a caller in to a local radio station say that they were on Highway 13 between Bawlf and Camrose, and who described the same scene that Perrault drove through.
Ruzicka said she made it home just in time to get one of her horses into the barn, get her car in the garage, and barely made it into the house before large, toonie-sized hail fell.
“It fell straight down,” she said, “with no wind hardly at all.”
Ruzicka said when the large hail stopped, all of a sudden the wind picked up, and a heavy downpour of mixed rain and pea-sized hail came down. “It was like when you see those pictures of cyclones,” she said, with the wind driving the rain and hail in great gusts.
She said she could have taken a snow shovel to the hail piled up on her deck afterwards, and when driving to work Friday morning, said many of the ditches and fields were still filled with water from the quantity of rain that had fallen.

Watchers in Killam didn’t get any precipitation until later in the evening, but kept their eyes on the black cloud to the west-northwest, especially when it dropped an apendage that started to take on a point that was stretching toward the ground.
News of hail north of Sedgewick and Lougheed reported damage to bumper wheat crops, while further east from there we only received reports of rain, interrupting the harvest, but not destroying it, thankfully.
News from those in the storm’s path report cases of nearly 100 per cent hail damage to their fields.