Alberta’s severe weather spikes crop damage claims

By hugjodi Global News

Posted July 4, 2016 3:24 pm

Updated July 6, 2016 4:09 pm

1 min read

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2:05 Alberta’s severe weather spikes crop damage claims

WATCH ABOVE: More than 1,700 insurance claims have been filed by Alberta farmers after weeks of hail and tornado level winds hitting the province. Gary Bobrovtiz reports – Jul 4, 2016

More than 1,700 insurance claims have been filed by Alberta farmers bearing the brunt of severe weather.

Hail and tornado-level winds have damaged crops across central and southern Alberta.

“We do our hail claims by month, so at the end of June we had just over 1,200 claims,” said Nikki Booth, Agricultural Financial Services Corp. “So we are starting off July with almost 500.”

Alberta has battled several weeks of severe weather.

Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued just after noon Monday, for central regions including the Red Deer, Ponoka, Innisfail and Stettler area and then extended south to include Airdrie, Cochrane, Olds and Sundre at around 12:40 p.m..

Throughout the afternoon watches and warnings continued to extend south and east, with some areas flipping between the two as cells continued to track across the province.

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As of 7:54 p.m. all warnings in the province had been reduced to watches, with the only affected areas being east central regions. By 10 p.m., all watches had been dropped.

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Earlier in the day Environment Canada warned that conditions were favourable for the development of funnel clouds in the central regions, as seen in photos shared on social media.