Wind and hail that cut across the southern Alberta prairie last month left a “scar” visible from outer space.
On Aug. 20, 2025, 150-kilometre-per-hour gusts shredded crops and stripped grass and ground cover. The storm slashed from south of Calgary to Saskatchewan, affecting about 425,000 acres of insurable crops, plus pasture and native grassland.
That most intense zone of the storm — a sort of epicentre that dragged for hundreds of kilometres — left behind a “hail scar” that can be seen in satellite images published by U.S. space agency NASA.
A patchwork of green shades, representing crops, hay and clumps of trees is replaced by a smear measuring about 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) wide and 200 kilometres (124.3 miles) long.
The damage on the ground was insane, by the way. Hail isn’t unusual here, nor hail damage. Usually it messes up roofing, knocks over crops and dents cars. Maybe smashes windshields if it’s really bad, that’s it. This time it basically ground off the top foot of anything soft. Crops were reduced to just stumps.
Accounts I’ve gotten from the people directly under it make me think it was more wind and quantity than raw size.
“Crop damage in this swath was total, with grain crops levelled and corn left as mostly bare stalks,” it reads. “Even areas of grassland were pulverized, with grass root systems exposed and native shrubs denuded and debarked on their western facing sides.”
Holy cow!
“Sorry, I can’t make it to work today because the hail might shred me to pieces.”
It will become far more common
Sad.
