Today I headed out on my usual weekend trip to Lougheed Town Centre to get a few things and have some lunch. Despite a call for rain in the early afternoon, it was still dry around 1 p.m. so I decided to risk it. It’s just rain, after all, not sulfuric acid. Not yet, anyway.
I noticed it was a tad on the breezy side as I began heading out and in fact I had not even walked a block before coming across a giant tree toppled across Sherbrooke Street, having barely missed crushing a car. Two blocks later I found another downed tree ominously resting on some power lines. More trees were down in Hume Park and by the time I got to the entrance to the Brunette River trail the scene looked like a hurricane had torn through it. And in a way it kind of had. Winds gusted up to 80 km/h for a few hours, knocking out power, knocking down copious copses of trees, disrupting ferry and SkyTrain service (the latter due to a tree falling over the track near Royal Oak station). CBC has several stories on the mayhem, one of which you can read here: Fierce B.C. storm knocks out power and causes havoc.
As the wind was still blowing at the river trail, I opted to not risk it since a lot of the trees along the river lean precariously without the assistance of freakishly strong winds pushing against them. Instead I walked up North Road, bypassing the intersections without working traffic lights and made my way to the mall, but not before the rain did indeed start, giving me a nice soak on the way in.
I’ve made a gallery of the destruction I saw enroute to Lougheed which can be found here: Windstorm August 29, 2015. Enjoy!
Here’s a sample of the wooden carnage around the corner from my place:
