Near Miss FTLComm - Tisdale July 14, 1999 As the dull dark clouds of Tuesday morning crumbled into patches there began emerging a series of towering Nimbostratus clouds. Over in the Battleford area they produced golf ball sized hail and grape shot hail in the Estevan area. But for us in Tisdale this one and many other like it passed us by moving from the West drifting by us to the South or like a couple that churned
their way by us just to the North. Though there appears to be a certain randomness to the movement of these massive storm clouds older farmers will point out that they tend to follow quite predictable paths. That certain fields on a farm will often fall victim to hail though decades apart there appears to be factors that influence these massive bodies of air water and sometimes severe winds. Farmers from Davidson to Yorkton all began to notice that the cloud patterns and precipitation they could expect shifted considerably when the huge reservoir now known as Diefenbaker Lake began to fill following the construction of the Gardener Damn near Outlook. We are a long way from being able to accurately proclaim where a storm cloud will travel but steadily we are making progress in determining some of the many factors that go into establishing the patterns that occur.