If you would have told me at noon on Canada Day that not five hours later the city of Yorkton would become a disaster area, I would not have believed you. It was a sunny, if extremely hot, day, and there was really little indication that the weather would go completely wrong that afternoon. Even sitting in my house as it started, it seemed completely surreal, as though somehow it was a different day altogether.
For myself, the storm and its aftermath worked as a slow reveal. From my own house, I could tell there was a lot of rain, some of which found its way into my basement through a leaky window, and from my window there appeared to be suspiciously high number of tree branches littering the street. I could tell that the storm was serious, but how serious was difficult to tell. It was obvious enough that there would be damage somewhere, but the extent was a mystery to me.
Of course, when I actually left the house, I saw the first startling indicator of just how bad the storm was. Looking south I could see nothing but a massive tree, blocking the entire street extending higher than my own house. That was, to put it mildly, a surprise. Perhaps I had never really experienced much in the way of natural disasters before, but this was a solid tree, not a half rotten twig, and here it was twisted off at the trunk.
The theme continued as I travelled down neighbouring streets. While my house was mostly above water, going less than a block in any direction revealed houses and streets that were not so lucky. I was blocked off from really travelling anywhere, as there was no way to actually get off my block without treading through deep water or over a tree. Not to say I wasn't tempting to try, but more lightning made the prospect of wading through water less than appealing, and given that my car is neither an off roader or a boat I thought it best to go where I could and return home to safety.
At this point, I knew things had not gone well overall, though again, it wasn't clear what the full extent of the damage was. Power was flaky enough that going online wasn't worth trying, and given that I was fenced in by nature there was little chance of seeing the disaster that happened around Broadway at the time.
The most interesting thing of all, however, was just what people were doing after the storm let up enough to leave shelter. People wandered the streets, looking at what they just experienced, trying to process how their world could have changed so dramatically in such a short period of time. There was a sense of wonder at the events, and a surprising amount of laughter on my street. The laughter was less of joy than of disbelief, as what we were all seeing was something that very few would ever expect on their front door. What other reaction could there be? One's home is a familiar place, and in a few short hours everything around it had change. People laugh because they need to react, and there is really no idea of what the reaction should be.
Of course, it's beginning to sink in just what happened, while in the immediate aftermath the mood was based on disbelief. Now we see how much loss there has been, and those of us lucky enough to come off relatively unscathed now can appreciate just how lucky we really were.
