Environment Canada is out with its top 10 weather events of 2020. The weather watcher says Canadians were impacted by another year of extreme weather events, from destructive summer hailstorms, to thick smoky skies, to powerful tornadoes. Calgary is known as the hailstorm capital of Canada and this year, it lived up to the reputation, topping the charts with the most damaging hailstorm in Canadian history. On June 13th, hail the size of tennis balls, propelled by wind speeds of up to 70 kilometre per hour, shook houses, shattered windows. and downed trees. That was good enough for top billing on the top 10. BC’s smoke-filled skies, which lasted two weeks, take second spot; and, the fires weren’t even in BC. The smoke funneled up from fires in the United States. Third place went to Fort McMurray’s, “Flood of a Century.”

The Top Ten Weather Stories of 2020:
1. Calgary’s Billion-Dollar Hailer
2. BC’s September Skies: All Smoke, No Fire
3. Fort McMurray’s Flood of a Century
4. Endless Hot Summer in the East
5. St. John’s Snowmageddon
6. Record Hurricane Season and Canada Wasn’t Spared
7. The Year’s Most Powerful Tornado
8. Frigid Spring Helps Canadians Self-Isolate
9. Fall in Canada – Winter in the West and Summer in the East
10. August Long-Weekend Storms: East and West