Golf ball-sized hail reported during severe afternoon storm in Ottawa

Published Jul 28, 2023 • Last updated 1 minute ago • 1 minute read

A golf ball used for comparison purposes shows the size of some of the hail stones that hit Ottawa on Friday afternoon. Photo by Christina Spencer /Postmedia

Hail the size of golf balls came down in parts of Ottawa as a severe thunderstorm moved through the national capital region on Friday afternoon.

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Just before the storm, Environment Canada issued a rare emergency alert for the Ottawa area after radar indicated hail accompanying the storm could be as large as baseball sized, up to seven centimetres in diameter, said Monica Vaswani, a warning preparedness meteorologist with the agency.

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Such a move is highly unusual, she said, but was done because the size of the hail represented a significant potential danger.

Environment Canada had initially warned of nickel-sized hail accompanied by winds of up to 90 km/h, but upgraded that warning based on radar.

“The largest report I have seen is about ping pong to golf ball-sized hail, around four to 4.5 centimetres in diameter,” Vaswani said.

The same weather cell responsible for the hail storm was also the subject of a late-afternoon tornado warning for regions outside Ottawa including Prescott and Russell, Maxville-Alexandria and Winchester-Newington.

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Another severe thunderstorm warning for Ottawa was issued by Environment Canada just before 6:30 p.m.

A spokesperson for the Ottawa Police Service said it had already received half a dozen calls about downed wires and trees as of about 4 p.m., many from central Ottawa neighbourhoods, including the area around Wellington West and Westboro.

One resident posted a picture on social media of a golf ball next to a similarly sized chunk of hail. Others reported hail stones bigger than golf balls.

Hydro Ottawa reported multiple power outages across its service territory in the Gloucester, Nepean, Ottawa, Goulbourn and Kanata areas.

“We are working to restore power as soon as possible,” said Hydro Ottawa, which has been involved in a weeks-long labour dispute with the union for 400 of its trades and technical employees and inside workers such as customer-service representatives.

An illustration of the large hail stones that hit parts of Ottawa on Friday. Photo by Christina Spencer /Postmedia A damaged tree on Keenan Avenue in the Westboro neighbourhood. Photo by Deborah Spears /Handout A tree damaged by Friday afternoon’s storm lies atop a small building in the Westboro-Carlingwood section of the city. Photo by Charlie Senack /Handout A flooded street in the Carlingwood-Westboro section of the city was one of the impacts of the storm on Friday afternoon. Photo by Charlie Senack /Postmedia