‘Trees are just shredded’: Severe storm tears through Calgary

It's been less than a year since the last one, so when a massive hailstorm blew through Calgary on Sunday night, it had lots of people worried.

Another powerful hailstorm battered Calgary on Sunday night, less than a year after similar wild weather devastated the city’s north end.

But this time, houses and vehicles were largely spared, while trees and gardens took the brunt of the damage.

In neighbourhoods such as Mount Pleasant and Tuxedo Park, hailstones the size of loonies rained down during a fast-moving thunderstorm that also brought high winds, toppling mature trees and shredding plants.

A 20-metre green ash tree snapped and fell onto Eryn Stephen’s camperized minivan in Tuxedo Park.

“You think maybe a branch here or there might come down, or yeah, you expect some hail damage,” Stephen said.

“But I’ve not seen a huge tree like this just snap.”

Last August’s catastrophic storm also struck north Calgary hardest.

This time, while roofs and windshields remained intact, residents described scenes of destruction in their backyards.

“Just kind of out of nowhere, the wind picked up and just huge hailstones started coming down, and yeah, just kind of caught everybody off guard,” said one resident.

“A couple of trees went down in the neighbourhood and yeah, just lots of damage, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, the wind has come in, like 60–70 miles an hour or more, I guess—knocked one of my trees down," said another.

“The backyard just looks like a war zone.”

The storm continued into Monday, with sporadic rainfall complicating cleanup efforts.

Shauna Langenberger spent much of Monday shovelling and sweeping up leaves and branches stripped from the trees in her Thorncliffe yard.

“Trees are just shredded. Our spruce trees, which are, you know, 50 years old, probably 50 per cent of the volume of the tree is now lying on the ground,“ she said.

“And so we’re out here doing a big cleanup. It’s devastating.”

CTV News contacted several insurance brokers Monday, asking if they had been receiving calls about hail damage following the storm.

None said they’d had even a single call.

No injuries were reported, and the City of Calgary says it has not had time to assess the dollar value of damage to the city’s urban canopy.