ADAM JACKSON/Ponoka News
When retired cattle farmer Wayne Gee was sitting in his front yard during a storm last week, he had no idea what was happening just 100 metres away.
Following the storm on July 7, he travelled west on his farm and noticed something he didn’t expect to see — a 40-foot by 40-foot storage shed had lifted from its foundation, landing more than 50 metres away, while some of it was in a nearby tree.
The shed contained several vehicles, including a large recreational trailer.
“I went down (to where the shed was) and saw the trailer,” said Gee. “I thought that was a little strange.”
Upon further inspection of the shed foundation, he noticed that 12 six by six posts had been ripped out of the ground by the sheer force of the wind. Some had snapped in two.
“The wind must have been extremely strong to break those posts,” said Gee.
“The thing that really shocked me was the part that was stuck in the tree,” said Gee. “It landed about 20 feet up in the tree, but it looks like it hit about 50 feet high.”
The peculiar thing that Gee noticed was the fact that none of the vehicles in the shed were damaged whatsoever — with the exception of a small scuff surrounded by dirt on the travel trailer.
Gee suspects that a small tornado must have ripped through the west side of his farm, destroying only a small section.
“I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I have never seen anything like this,” said Gee.
Although no one is quite sure what happened, the evidence left on the farm shows that whatever ripped through the Gee farm last week packed a lot of power, even tearing the rafters out of the two by four roof supports.