Huge hail chunks fell near Regina Beach during Thursday storm

Environment Canada says hail ranging in size from dimes to golf balls fell in areas of Saskatchewan during Thursday’s storms.

Anastasia Zubrycky, who lives near Regina Beach, saw and heard it firsthand.

“I was out in my backyard and all I could see was this dark ring, and then this movement of clouds that was kind of on the diagonal. It was creepy,” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, something’s going down.’ ”

After that, her phone buzzed with a tornado warning. It was a scramble to try and get everything sorted out.

“I got the alert. I brought the dogs inside and tried to get one or two vehicles (under cover), pushing them into the garage. Then, (it was) ‘Ooh, batten down the hatches,’ ” she recalled.

While no tornado came to the area, her place was pelted with huge chunks of hail.

“The ones that we grabbed were about three-quarters of an inch to an inch big. They were pretty hunky. The sound of them plunking against my window, it’s not a sound you want to hear every day,” she said.

Thankfully, though they were very big pieces of ice falling from the sky, Zubrycky got away mostly fine.

“We were pretty lucky. The cars, we were able to get in for the most part. The one that we had out, it was OK. But our trees just got shaken out real good,” she said.

The storm didn’t come all at once.

“It was that first, immediate, ‘OK, warning, hail going down,’ and then there was this odd calm before the storm … There was a little bit of a lull (when) you know something big is going to happen. That was probably the creepiest part, and then we got hit with a ton of rain after that,” Zubrycky remembered.

Tornado warnings were issued throughout Saskatchewan through the evening, but Environment Canada hadn’t received any reports of damage as of Friday morning.

Meteorologist Danielle Desjardins said the weather service was investigating two possible incidents where a tornado may have touched down — one northwest of Moose Jaw, the other near the Manitoba border — but Environment Canada hadn’t yet determined if they were in fact tornadoes.