Man films destructive hailstorm while caught in car
Gibran Marquez Cedillo and his friends pulled over as hailstones up to the size of softballs came crashing down — and his footage of dozens of other vehicles and their damage shows just how lucky they were to avoid injury.
Grapefruit-sized hail damaged at least 70 vehicles along a highway in central Alberta on Aug. 1, leaving many drivers and passengers fearing for their lives.
When severe weather rolled into central Alberta on Monday, Aug. 1, Gibran Marquez Cedillo and his two friends huddled together as massive hailstones bombarded the vehicle they were in.
Video taken by Cedillo shows him and his two friends huddled together for safety, covering their heads as the windows shattered and the windshield cracked like spiderwebs.
Vehicles had pulled over from the Queen Elizabeth Highway between Calgary and Red Deer on Monday to wait out a damaging hailstorm, according to Global News.
At least 34 vehicles were damaged with their windshields and windows shattered, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as the car with Cedillo and his friends had. Originally, the RCMP had estimated at least 70 cars had been damaged.
Nickel- to softball-sized hail was reported in the region on Monday.
Cedillo told Storyful that the ordeal lasted 17 minutes and that he and his two friends, John Tezcan and Karlee Bertsch, were "fearing for [their] lives" after receiving a notification issuing a tornado watch in the region. Tornado alerts were dropped later that evening, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Stuart Brideaux, public education officer with Alberta Health Services, told CBC that while some people were indirectly hit by hail coming in through windows and broken glass, no one required transportation to the hospital.
A storm chaser at the town of Innisfail, about 18 miles southwest of Red Deer, posted over Twitter about meeting a family who had gotten caught up in the hail. The hailstones had dented the hood of their car, shattered the sunroof and left several cracks across the windshield. The back window of the car was completely shattered, caving in on the back seats.
As for the damage dealt to the car Cedillo had been in, which belonged to Bertsch, he told Storyful it was a "complete write-off."
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