Another day, another missed lunch break. I am the only broker left in my group who can service requests as the rest are on vacation until the end of the week. My busy job is now that much busier and every time I thought I was leaving for lunch I wasn’t. At four o’clock my boss messaged me in Teams and said, “you’re done for the day.” I’m still feeling like a can of smashed arseholes, so I didn’t argue with him. I punched out.
I looked out the front door on the way up the stairs, and, whoa. A major storm system was inbound. Even better, the wind hadn’t kicked up yet. I skittered upstairs and pulled my drone kit out of the front closet.
The wind was still low so I took a risk and flew all the way up to my recommended 120m ceiling and starting shooting my panoramic with the camera oriented vertically. I got one wind warning as I was shooting the last HDR bracket, which was good timing. I immediately dropped the drone back down to 10m off the ground and landed it. I nearly put the drone into the potentilla bush out front as the wind suddenly hammered everything sideways as I was one meter off the ground. Pretty sure I would have lost my poor little aircraft if it had still been all the way up when the storm kicked in.
An hour of wind and rain with lightning followed. No hail, thankfully. Calgary and Chestermere both took damage, but we lucked out as the worst of the storm passed south of town. You take your wins when you can get them.
Today’s panorama courtesy of a DJI Mini 3 photography drone, which thankfully did not get swept away by the wind that came with the storm.
