Thursday, June 7, 2007

Calgary succumbs to forces of nature

I was away for a few days in Edmonton on a very successful attempt to implement automated shimming on a high-field MRI system. I'm quite proud of this, since I did all the work from developing the pulse sequence to analysis and shim correction. The only thing I haven't done because of a lack of expertise is actually doing the change in shim values.

Then I came home Tuesday evening and ran into a rather nasty storm. On Deerfoot Trail, the main route into Calgary, was backed up and I could see the northbound lanes were blocked by police. I thought it was a nasty accident, as I could see debris on the road, and people going my way were rubber-necking. But as I drew closer I realized that what I thought was road was a new lake, and the debris was all that was left of car roofs! We had over 700 mm of rain that evening and the light show was fantastic. Two people were struck by lightning (a la Caddyshack), but are expected to recover. Traffic is still being affect due to washouts of major interchanges in the city.
UPDATE: June 8 - The ramp to eastbound Glenmore at 14th St. SW is still closed due to washout. The rainfall Tuesday evening was 72 mm. That's double the previous record of 36.6 mm!

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