'ABSOLUTE CHAOS': Calgary windstorm rips out trees, damages house in Lake Bonavista

CALGARY — Picture this: it's a sunny day, and out of nowhere, a great wind appears, sweeping trees from their roots with monumental blasts, smashing into the nearest houses.This is what one resident of Lake Bonavista in Calgary described to the Western Standard as having happened on Tuesday afternoon — a very unsuspecting turn of events. Environment Canada warned Tuesday of severe thunderstorms in Southern Alberta, tracking "dangerous" wind gusts and ping-pong-sized hail.However, this is not what Alan Campbell expected to happen in his neighborhood, due to the calm he had observed only moments before. "I was out working in the garage and could hear this weird noise outside," Campbell said. ."It was sunny, blue skies, that kind of thing, and a little bit of a breeze."All of a sudden "it literally sounded like there was a jet that was going to land on top of our house, and the garage was shaking, and I looked out the garage window, and I could see our cantilever patio umbrella just going all over the place."He said it was not too long after close to his neighbor's house, a spruce tree was hit so severely by the blasts of wind it was torn out of the ground."It was two doors down from us, they had a spruce tree in the front yard that's probably about 50 to 60 feet tall — a very mature tree," Campbell described. ."[The wind] blew that tree over and tore the roots right out of the ground.""There were two or three more fir trees that were blown, roots and all, right out of the ground. They hit that house, they hit that door that was on the news," he recalled.Campbell said in the 16 years he's been living in the community, he's never seen wind this severe.He described there being "a considerable amount of damage" done by the wind, though the wind storm's reach was very "isolated — which is weird.".A peculiar storm, indeed, which provoked "absolute chaos."In the aftermath, Campbell says there was a considerable cleanup: "The whole community banded together, and we got our chainsaws out, everything started removing trees, and the city came and helped.""My neighbor, the tree fell onto his property and there was branches resting up against his truck, but he didn't even have a [single] scratch on it.""He was pretty lucky. [If it had hit the truck] literally a couple more inches to the left and it would have beat the truck box up pretty bad.".Though the storm did bring chaos — it also brought a sense of community that Campbell says was the true silver lining of the storm."I was a farm boy from Saskatchewan, so I have very conservative values. But you know, a guy two doors away from me, he's as left as you could get."Despite their differing views Campbell says his neighbor "was out there chipping in, and we get along great. ""But that was the nice thing — sometimes it takes something horrible to happen to get people to actually drop the narratives and just pitch it and get the work done right."."So that was one of the things that I kind of took away from yesterday," Campbell, reflected. He says when people get together and work to help their community, "it gives you a bit of a restoration of hope that people maybe aren't as bad as others say they are."So maybe residents won't be thanking mother nature for its unexpected turn of events, but residents will be thanking each other for their teamwork in its aftermath.

'ABSOLUTE CHAOS': Calgary windstorm rips out trees, damages house in Lake Bonavista

Related Stories

Two paddleboarders found dead after Browning Lake tragedy in Squamish

Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation claims potential 'unmarked graves' at residential school site near Grande Prairie

PINDER: The renewable energy myth — why wind and solar may not reduce emissions

Nova Scotia wind project backed with $206M in public funds after private lenders stayed away