Unexpected Tornado Priddis July 22 2015 — Dan Madden

Published on July 22, 2015

Tornado Genesis West of Calgary seen from the SE

What an interesting day to catch a tornado close to Calgary.

The wife and I were not even chasing this day and on our way to the grocery store. I spotted the supercell in the distance and watched it consolidate real fast. That’s when I gave her my Cell phone to take shots with. Unfortunately I left the DSLR at home and the best I could do is manage taking photos with my One plus phone at the time.

As I waited for my wife to complete the quick shopping trip I kept snapping photos.

20 Minutes later I was able to get home and grab the DLSR and snap some shots of the dying Mesocyclone as it moved east of Calgary.

Thankfully the only damage was to an abandoned house near the turn off to Priddis on the NE corner of 22x. About this point it started to outflow as the temp dropped about 2 degrees.

Dying Meso east of Calgary seen on Hwy 22

Dan Madden – Assistant team lead – Twisted Chasers

Dan Madden

Edmonton AB born storm chaser, I have been intrigued by weather at a very young age. Even before I witnessed one of the largest most deadly Tornado's in Canada. The 1987 Edmonton Tornado made an impact in my life I will forever remember. We moved to Calgary right after the 1988 winter olympics. Check out these rare photos here ---> Edmonton Tornado By the age of 18 and when I finally got my drivers license and a car, I would start little trips to the outskirts of the city and check out CG strikes. Once they started adding public radar data and when I got Internet (haha dated), I would then start checking out storms further from the city as well every once in awhile. Fast forward to 2012, I started to chase storms old school style by printing numerical charts and checking out targeted areas. While also working on my new hobby of landscape photography, which I was still green at. Mainly watching a bunch of good lightning storms that year and failing to capture any, my co-worker informed me of a storm chase community that was based around Alberta. 2013 was the year I actually set out to capture real active weather. To which I got my first Supercell in Southern Alberta. I also learned how to properly capture lightning. Come 2014 Ronnie of Twisted Chasers picked me up as one of their chasers. Since then I have documented many different types of weather phenomenon in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Observing 3 tornadoes in that time. Assistant team leader of Twisted Chasers, based out of Red Deer AB.

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