The hail damage calls for Prostar Collision Center owner Trevor Bridge have started and he expects plenty more will be coming.
“We have been getting a lot of calls,” said Bridge on Friday from his shop at 6454 Golden West Avenue in Red Deer. “Right now, it’s just kind of started. We’ve already done about four estimates.”
Hailstorms swept through parts of Red Deer on Saturday and hammered Lacombe on Tuesday, cutting power for several hours.
It was a damaging onslaught for many vehicle owners. Saturday’s Red Deer hailstorm tossed down hailstones as big as marbles and left telltale dimples on many vehicle hoods and roofs.
Hail damage is typically covered by vehicle insurance, said Bridge.
But it can be a costly repair. Estimates he has done often range between $5,000 and $7,000.
For minor dents, he can do a paintless dent removal, which uses suction to pull out the ding. For more severe damage, the metal might needed to be sanded down, patched with fibreglass and repainted.
Bridge said after the first flurry of calls — he’s getting three or four day right now — it often gets quieter. That is often only a temporary lull because many vehicle owners don’t want to risk getting hit again so they wait until the hail season has passed in the fall to get the damage repaired.
Central Alberta crops have also taken a pounding.
Red Deer County agricultural services manager Cody McIntosh said he’s hearing the areas hit by hail are patchy but covered a big area, as far south as Sundre and up into the Elnora area on the east side of Red Deer County.
The hail damage was limited to pockets in the county.
“It wasn’t a big swath across the entirety of the county,” he said.
Hailstorms are an unwelcome cost of doing business in large parts of Alberta. An area from Whitecourt to High River has been dubbed “Hailstorm Alley” and central Alberta is right in the middle.
“There’s a strip east and west of Bowden that usually gets some of the worst hail,” he said.
John Guelly, a Westlock-area farmer and former president of Alberta canola, tweeted that he has been hearing some bad news.
“A very nasty hail storm in the Lacombe-Ponoka-Stettler triangle. Acres and acres hit, with some completely decimated. Corn with the top foot or too just mowed right off,” he tweeted on Thursday evening.
McIntosh said hail can be particularly damaging at this time of year.
“We’re in the peak of canola flowing and that will help the pods set. So, if we’ve lost all of these petals and leaves it can be really damaging to the potential yield in a lot of these fields.”
Other crops are also vulnerable at this stage of the summer and suffer significant damage from hail.
“We don’t want to see any stress at this time of year during those peak development stages.”
The area’s reputation for hailstorms and for making up the vast majority of hail damage insurance claims has prompted a team of researchers from University of Western Ontario to launch a five-year study. They will try to determine why it happens so frequently here and whether anything can be done to limit the damage.