By Jeremy Appel on August 8, 2018.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com @MHNJeremyAppel
Hatter Dustin Zdan ended up in the eye of the Alonsa Tornado after going with his family to his parents’ cabin on Lake Manitoba.
“We were going back for the August long weekend to spend four days at the lake and a little bit of R&R, but it didn’t quite turn out that way,” said Zdan.
The cellphone reception near the cabin was poor, so nobody received any warning about the impending storm.
He said the weather was fine on the afternoon of Aug. 3, but then dark clouds started to appear around 6 p.m.
“There was a bit of a thunderstorm around,” said Zdan. “Sometime around 8:30 (p.m.), we got pelted with golf ball-sized hail.”
The family sought shelter in the cabin, but once the hail stopped, Zdan noticed the dark clouds remained.
“I went out of the cabin and looked around the trees, and that’s when I saw the tornado, which at that point was mere minutes from us, if that,” he said.
“The sound of it was just eerie. It sounded like jet engines … We figured it was coming right at us, so we basically bailed.”
Zdan loaded his wife, two kids, parents, aunt and uncle into their van, and they took off to the aunt and uncle’s nearby farmhouse to seek shelter in its basement.
“When we got out of the car, I had a hard time putting the back hatch down, because the wind was already going crazy,” he said.
Zdan said it’s hard to explain what fleeing a tornado feels like.
“You just kind of react and basically do what you need to do,” he said. “The aftermath is really when you start to think about different things.”
After the storm, Zdan returned to his parents’ cabin with his father. The building was “completely destroyed.”
They returned to the area in the morning to try and recover some of their belongings.
“The next day it really set in for most of the family how close we were to a not-so-good ending,” he said.
“We take some of the (weather) warnings for granted … I know I won’t be taking them for granted anymore.”