Rex Olsen stands on the second floor of his family's home near Highway 523 on Tuesday, one day after a violent windstorm took off the roof and caused damage in portions of Cypress County. - NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Tornado or not, violent wind storms this week near Medicine Hat are bringing back memories of natural disasters that shaped the region and left long-lasting effects.
At least 21 homes in Cypress County were severely damaged this week by what is now described as a plow wind after initial reports of a tornado touching down southwest of the city. Redcliff was pummelled. Power lines and trees were downed in Medicine Hat.
That can’t help but bring comparisons to the infamous 1915 Redcliff cyclone that hit the then-burgeoning industrial centre, knocking its vaunted growth plans off track for decades.
Essentially gone after the June 25, 1915 storm in the widespread damage were an ironworks, knitting mill, and heavy damage to glass works, hotel and other businesses and homes.
“The town was destroyed, and that stayed in people’s mindset,” said Eric Vallee, the manager of the Redcliff Museum, which is currently staging a display of “Hardships” including the tornado, compounded by the First World War and resulting recession, as well as other trials through the decades.
“It had the effect of maybe scaring off investors, but it made the town stronger,” said Vallee. “The people who stayed rebuilt. And if it happened again, I think the result would be the same.”
The southeast is subject to electrical storms, hail and high winds on an annual basis, but few rank among the worst.
Most recently, Medicine Hat saw significant wind damage in 2015 and 2017. Over the years a number of hail storms caused localized damage. A storm-burst in Redcliff flooded large portions of the town during the 2013 flood emergency in Medicine Hat.
Hail storms in 1979 badly damaged dozens of greenhouses before coated glass was widely employed. That was said to be the worst since a 1963 storm that broke half the glass of the recently formed RedHat growing partnership with three-inch hailstones.
Ten years before that, retired Hatter John MacLaren was just 13 years old on Aug. 23, 1953, working bailing hay in what is now Echo Dale.
He saw black clouds massing to the east, and after several bad storms earlier in the season, he and his cousin headed for shelter to wait out what was called the worst storm since the 1915 cyclone.
“It sounded like a thousand head of buffalo coming over the hill on top of us,” said MacLaren this week. “You never forget that noise; it was so horrendously loud.
When he emerged, gone were the bails of rye grass as well as the 12-inch stubble they had left on the ground.
Flattened to the ground were four 125-foot radio towers they had been working under.
The top headline on the News the next day was “95-mile hurricane screams into city” – screeching wind, torrential rain and hail along with electrical storms plowed into the region west of Medicine Hat and the city proper.
Long-distance telephone lines were down for two days. Local calls to insurance adjusters and the city power shop mounted.
Wind well over 100-kilometres per hour blew out picture windows at Eatons on Third Street downtown. One-inch worth of “horizontal rain” drove into window casings and “wet the drapery behind closed windows.” A home in Riverside lost its roof in a “havoc trail of dust, rain, hail; Worst storm ever.”
With greenhouse damage and gardens across the city “flattened” the Horticultural Society cancelled the city-wide flower show scheduled for two days hence.
Redcliff was also pummelled. Beyond residential tree damage and flooding, the roof of Gunderson’s Brick plant was badly damaged, rain drove into the vents at Dominion Glass – soaking workers with mud and oil – and lightning stuck the chimney of Gordon Memorial Church.
“This is the worst storm to that has struck in this district since the cyclone of 1915,” the report of the day concluded.
MacLaren said the 1953 storm stuck with him. As young man working at the new Goodyear Tire plant, he felt uneasy on hot summer days on what was then bare prairie, and reports of this week’s storms brought it vividly back into his mind.
“That sort of thing can really traumatize you,” he said. “You hate to think how bad it would have been.”
Of course, he said, in the 1950s, Redcliff was much smaller in size and north of Crescent Heights, including plant sites was undeveloped.
