Falcon Lake gets pelted with hail from storm system Wednesday evening

Stormy weather rolled through Falcon Lake, dumping hail the size of golf balls which caused some damage. 

Kristyn da Mata lives in the Falcon Lake Townsite. She says the storm dumped a lot of hail, some rain, and caused a power outage. 

“At 7:30pm, I think, the power went out and the skies were quite dark,” she recalls. “My kids were over at our community club for our local evening of bingo. And everyone from panicking.” 

Her children quickly returned home, and they got ready for extreme weather, especially with Tornado Alerts going off on their phones. 

“We got all our stuff out of our closet where our crawl space door hatch is, so we could go into our crawl space in the event of tornado. Most of our houses out here don't have basements,” da Mata notes. “They were here for about half an hour and then we could hear thunder; we could see some lightning. And then, all of a sudden, the hail just started coming down. I've never heard it like that before.”

Hail that fell Wednesday evening in Falcon Lake Townsite. (Photo Credit: Kristyn da Mata)

Their yard was quickly covered with hail pieces. 

“It looked like it had snowed,” she says. “The road was covered, and you could just hear the hail hitting the roof, the furniture and our vehicle outside. The size of the hail here was about the size of a golf ball.” 

As da Mata surveyed the damage this morning, she reports some small branches littering the yard, but no significant concerns. The same cannot be said for other areas around Falcon Lake.

Linsay Laroque Young share a short video to the Falcon Lake Community page, showing how much hail was falling in a brief period of time.

“I know the campground just east of us, the Lakeshore Campground got hit pretty hard and lots of tents are ripped through, lots of damages on vehicles and trailers,” says da Mata. 

The storm lasted around 40 minutes before it moved on. Power was restored last night, and da Mata is thankful it was not as bad as it could have been. 

“We live beside the Falcon Beach Auto, which is the gas station in Falcon Lake. And there was reportedly a funnel cloud over top of the Shell station, which we live beside. Someone saw the clouds form and then it got sucked back up pretty quick, so it didn't touch down and hit anything.”

Candy's Crafty Collections posted this photo Thursday morning to the Falcon Lake Community page on Facebook. (Photo Credit: Candy's Crafty Collections/Facebook)

During the stormy weather, da Mata’s three children were a bit frightened and chose to wait out the storm before getting to bed. 

“They wanted to make sure the storm was done; the warnings were over before they were comfortable to go to bed. So, we just sat in the dark. My oldest son is 15 and has autism. He really didn't understand what was going on. He was also quite scared, and I was just thankful we didn't have to get into our crawl space because I don't know how he would have fared down there.” 

The only thing da Mata says she would do differently when the next storm approaches would be to make sure their cell phones are charged before the power goes out. She says the phone batteries were running low by the end of the short storm.