[Image from Global News]

On Friday May 4th the region in which I live was hit by a severe windstorm that caused citywide power outages and property damage. At its peak the wind reached speeds of 122km/hr which if sustained, would be considered hurricane strength. Hurricanes aren’t exactly common in Canada so for us, this was a pretty big deal.

My drive to University that day was pretty uneventful, minus some fog on the roads. I hadn’t heard anything about incoming weather but that’s not really surprising considering I never actually check the weather in the morning. Later in the afternoon and colleague approached me and said that he was a bit worried on his drive to class that afternoon because he felt like his car was going to be blown off the road. I looked outside the windows and didn’t really notice anything peculiar other than some light rain so I didn’t think anything of it. Soon afterwards the rain picked up into a severe thunderstorm and I received a text from my wife asking if we should put her car in the garage tonight because the News was stating that winds could be powerful enough to knock over cars.

Whoa! That escalated quickly.

My drive home was also pretty uneventful though, except for the fact that several traffic lights were out of service due to power outages across the city. The drive took about 20 minutes longer than it normally would – not a huge deal.

When I pulled into the driveway and got out of my car I noticed a piece of lattice work had blown onto our yard from my neighbor’s side fence. I missed the fact that the wind had snapped the base of the 4x4’s that anchored the fence to the ground and that his entire fence was actually laying on his yard.

I walked inside and my wife told me to go look in the backyard. Apparently the storm was a lot worse than I had originally thought. The wind had knocked over two panels of our inner fence. The destruction had also carried on through to my neighbors fences as well. It looked like an elephant had run through both of our yards.

I look on the side of our house and noticed that a big panel of the neighbors siding had also blown off. The wind continued for a few more hours and my wife and I watched as our remaining fence shook back and forth like a piece of card stock sitting in front a rotary fan. Luckily for us it held up through the remainder of the storm. At one point I heard a strange tearing sound on our roof that I thought must either be the shingles letting go or the actual plywood of the roof being pulled apart. I didn’t see any damage the next day so I’m not exactly sure what I was hearing.

On Sunday we took our dog for a walk in the park and noticed several downed trees and on our drive we saw several other fences laying on the ground on peoples lawns.

The wind did a pretty big number on the city overall. We stopped in at the hardware store to by cement and fence posts and I noticed that nearly everyone in the store was doing the same. Almost everyone had their carts loaded up with deck boards, fence posts and cement so I surmised that a lot of people in the city would be spending the next few weeks re-building their fences and decks.

All in all it was a pretty eventful weekend. I’ve never built a fence but I guess that’s what I’ll be doing once the ground dries.

Thanks For Reading

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