Wabamun residents clean up, assess damage after wicked summer storm

Wabamun residents are cleaning up, after a wicked summer storm ripped through the lake lots Wednesday evening. The thunderstorm hit around 8PM and only lasted about 45 minutes however, many residents say it was a storm like they’ve never seen before.

“I’ve never seen wind like that, ever, in my life,” says Patrick Starr, who has called Wabamun home for ten years.

“It made me nervous. I was wondering if the windows were going to hold up because (the wind) was definitely horizontal,” he adds.

“We’ve experienced some pretty good storms in the past, but I haven’t experienced this type of damage before,” says Randall Joly, also a resident at Wabamun lake.

Residents spent most of the day Thursday assessing the damage after high winds snapped tree branches and uprooted large trees. Severe gusts even scattered boats, surfboards and sea-doos across property lines.

“The neighbours boat was sitting on top of our pier,” says Joly adding, “I lost a couple of trees and my gazebo’s toast.”

Trees crashed onto power lines, knocking out power to residents for hours. It was restored by two Thursday morning.

Many area residents say they’re used to summer storms, but this year has been more intense than they’ve ever seen.

“The intensity of the storms has been surprising. We haven’t had long, drawn out rains, but when we do get the rains it’s so much, so fast,” Joly explains.

The area has had so much rain in such a short amount of time that the ground is sopping wet, some yards even look like lakes of their own.

Despite the damage, Starr calls himself very fortunate, as his cottage was not damaged and nobody was injured.

The storm also hit the Wabamun townsite however, only caused minor damage.

With files from Kendra Slugoski.