Joyce Harvey stands amid the damage to her home’s deck several hours after a windstorm damaged it on Aug. 3. Photo by Lori Stodola - Click on picture for larger image
OSOYOOS TIMES-August 11, 2010
By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times
It was about 3:45 p.m. on Aug. 3 when Joyce Harvey was sitting on the sofa in the living room of her Spartan Drive home when she looked out the window and saw a storm approaching over Osoyoos Lake.
Strong winds and hail began to hit the windows at the back of her home, which stands on the lakeshore at Lacey Point, and when a loud bang rang out, Harvey thought her roof was about to cave in.
A burst of wind ripped the railing off of her home’s back deck and hurled a section of it onto her barbecue.
Harvey feared parts of the railing and deck, as well as patio furniture, were going to crash through her windows.
“It made a real mess and scared me to tears,” she said, adding a sharp piece of railing that was torn off was pointing right at the window in front of her as the wind blew ferociously outside.
“I didn’t believe that was happening to me.”
Within three to five minutes, she said, the wind whipped parts of the deck and portions of her roof around her property, with pieces of railing also falling in her vegetable garden.
Part of the deck’s fence ended up on her neighbour’s property west of her home and some flew over her house and landed across the road.
The metal roof over the deck folded back over the house, she said, and lattice work was bent and damaged across the deck.
The storm was over as quickly as it began, Harvey said, and she was amazed at how localized the winds were since none of the properties bordering her home were damaged aside from some fallen branches.
In fact, she said, scaffolding set up at a house across the street from her didn’t even move during the storm.
While none of her windows were damaged, her roof and most of her back deck will have to be replaced.
Harvey was grateful and astounded that insurance personnel responded so quickly as workers were there to begin repair efforts the morning after the storm.
She said insurance will cover all of the repairs.
Harvey has lived in the home for 29 years and said while she’s witnessed storms and hail come across the lake in the past, she has never experienced any event like the winds that damaged her home.
She wasn’t sure how much repairs would cost but was certain the damage was much more than $5,000.
Doug Lundquist, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the top wind speed recorded at a monitoring station near the Hwy. 3 bridge during the Aug. 3 storm was 20 km/h, but stronger gusts were possible in other parts of the area.
The storm dumped about 1.8 millimetres of precipitation here and caused temperatures to plunge from 31 C at 3 p.m. to 23 C at 4 p.m.
The Southern Interior is prone to thunderstorms from May to mid-August, Lundquist said, and the chain of storms that have passed through the South Okanagan in the past two weeks were part of an upper level disturbance that moved in from the Coast and brought cooler air and more moisture to the area.
A ridge of high pressure was expected to return to the Interior this week and end the succession of storms, he said.
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