Last night was a pretty wild night. We came home from a nice day at the lake and were relaxing when all of the phones in our home started going off with emergency alerts. Baseball-sized hail and possible tornadoes were heading straight for Strathmore. We went outside to get a look at the sky and it was all kinds of fuck me.
The pic above is courtesy of my daughter who took it on the street in front of our home (visible at extreme right). I didn’t get any pictures because we were still shuffling vehicles and plant pots around to try and save what we could. When the storm hit, it really hit, damaging property and yards all around the area. We rode it out and woke up the next morning with a weather hangover.
Our garden and flower beds are finished for the rest of the year. We were a week or two away from getting fresh tomatoes and zucchini, but no longer.
Strathmore, AB, 2024-08-06
AB, 2024-08-06
Last week you could just see the tomatoes if you peeked through the thick leaves above them. Those leaves were shredded off the plants and are now on the ground below them. The tomatoes themselves look like the victims of a drive by shooting.
AB, 2024-08-06
AB, 2024-08-06
There was no food for the birds this past winter because of the drought the previous summer. The trees had been coming along nicely this year and I was hopeful the birds would have some food this winter. Well, so much for that. The hail shredded the merry hell out of our trees and the majority of the berries from the Mayflower tree are on the ground. I’d guestimate that the Mountain Ash lost half of its berries. The ones still on the tree are battered to hell and I’m not sure they’ll last now.
AB, 2024-08-06
Strathmore, AB, 2024-08-06
The Weeping Birch in our front yard has never been healthy thanks to that wasting disease trees get, but some chunks of it were still flush with leaves. The section pictured above had leaves last week. Not this week. And everywhere you look there is debris on the fence, on the ground, etc.
Here’s hoping that’s the last party Mother Nature throws for us this summer.
Images made using Ray’s Canon EOS 7D and a 70-300mm EF IS USM f4-5.6 lens.
