A Westlock County family experienced a very scary phenomenon during last Tuesday’s thunderstorm.
Renee Glenn and her family had eight of the trees on their property near Highway 18 and Range Road 260 torn down when what was effectively a miniature tornado landed in the front yard during the storm that swept through the region on July 2.
Glenn said she believed the technical term for what landed in her front yard was a down draft, which is a vertical movement of air from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure one.
“It was horrible and scary,” Glenn said of the experience. “It swirled in my front yard and ripped down eight trees.”
She didn’t know exactly what had happened until she went out to take a look at the damage. What she saw told her it wasn’t a strong gust of wind that knocked over the trees.
“When we went out to look at the trees, all the trees were twisted,” she said.
The down draft was very localized, Glenn said, causing damage only to her trees.
“It didn’t get the house and it didn’t get the power lines,” she said. “It didn’t get anything.”
She added she was lucky in that regard, because the tree closest to her house is about 40 feet tall, and its roots were pulled out of the ground as it was knocked over.
