Lightening: 1 Puny Humans: 0

Re: Thunderstorms

I still love thunderstorms. I still love to watch the massive display of raw power, and hear its crash just seconds later. I think its cool, and I think it makes cool pictures. I don't like to work on these nights - for several reasons. 1) I'm stuck inside, and unable to watch the storm 2) I'm focused on protecting other people while they are at the pool 3) The roads are usually a gong show afterwards on my way home.

All this you already knew about me. What is new, is my blatant realization of exactly how dangerous and powerful these storms really are. This last one that hit central Alberta spanned from Red Deer/Camrose to Edmonton/Devon/Leduc area. Again, I was working. Here is the effect of the storm on some of these locations.

Leduc: Trees on powerlines, cops having a nightmare with roads. Large objects previously thought unmovable flying across the sky. Lost connection with Leduc's major power source - blackout across 90% of Leduc. The only place with power? The pool. This is because you have to do some serious damage to make us get more than a power surge. You have to kill a transformer entirely. We had a few power surges, causing the lights to go out for about 10 minutes at a time, a few alarms to go off, and fire/ems to show up because the alarms go off. Our roof is being repaired, so it rained inside the building alot more than usual.

Devon (aka my house): When my parents got home they discovered that our big glass patio table had been shattered by the hail. Not just cracked. Shattered. Our garden was flattened, and our patio swing canopy was mangled. Leaves, branches, and sometimes full trees everywhere. The Devon outdoor pool had to deal with large tree branches in the pool. No worries, they clear it the second it looks like lightening.

Camrose: Big Valley Jamboree was on this weekend, and you may or may not have seen this on the news. The insane wind caused their main, big performance stage to flip, trapping people underneath. At least one person was presumed dead before the end of the night, and there were at least 15 people in critical condition. The last day of the event was cancelled.

Yep. Lightening/Hail/Wind gets a score of one, and the pathetic humans get none.