After watching the great light show in the sky from our 6th floor hotel in Calgary, we knew we would be chasing that same system today….and boy did we ever.
Just a note, there was no picture taking today. It was a full focus on sliding between cells to get to our location without being dumped on by rain…some rain is not a problem, however we were trying to avoid the deluge of water pouring from the skies that we witnessed the previous evening.
The first part of the day was amazing. The temperature was good, not a lot of traffic as it was a Saturday morning in Calgary.
We stopped in Medicine Hat for lunch and headed back out to finish the 2nd half of our route for the day, still keeping an eye on the radar and weather in Swift Current. As we headed down the highway, the winds started picking up. Fortunately it is a sustained wind however a strong sustained wind. Riding behind and around transport trucks is not a lot of fun in the wind as they tend to push a lot of it back. Today was no exception. About 100 kms out from Swift Current we took note of the large storm system that looked eerily like last nights storm. As the roads slightly changed direction here and there (mostly straight lol), we seemed to be avoiding that larger one. From what I had seen on the radar however, there was a smaller cell system that had broken off and was not yet in our prevue. About 15 kms from our destination we could see that smaller cell, quickly highlighted by two very strong streaks of lightning. No stopping now…..as we took the exit to Swift Current, we saw another lightning strike but fortunately it had now moved off to the north and we managed to suffer only a few sprinkles of rain.
Tomorrow we will follow this same system however I think it has moved enough that we will not have to worry about it or any smaller cells on our ride tomorrow. We will have the benefit of the cooler temperatures though and we look forward to that. Hoping that it continues east, bringing cooler air behind it, providing much needed rain to the areas that need it and that it relieves some of the smoke air quality issues they are currently seeing further east. Thunder Bay registered an 11 in air quality today…6 is uncomfortable.
So just to give you a taste of this storm system here is a couple of photos and a small video of the storm we took from our room in Calgary….Enjoy the show.
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