Football, fondue and thunderstorms

I was invited to Mike and Angie's this weekend to watch some football and then have a big backyard fondue party, complete with beers-bee. The football game was a wash (guess we'll have to beat the Alouettes next time) but the fondue was a big success! It was a muggy, hot, sticky day in the backyard but we still enjoyed the food and the entertainment from beers-bee. I had never heard of the game before but apparently it is rather popular in backyards across Edmonton, even in some backyards in Ontario. Anyway there are some rules I don't quite understand but the main focus is to knock your opponents beer can off the stick and make them drink. Sounds simple enough. Here are some photos:

As the night wore on and the weather got even hotter and stickier we could feel a storm moving in and soon enough we were hearing weather warnings for our area. Literally in about 20 mins. the sky grew dark and green (never a good sign on the prairies), the temperature dropped about 12 degrees and the wind picked up. The lightning was intense and we had a quick spat of rain and wind and then it got deathly still again. Suddenly the sky grew a darker green with some brown in it and the wind picked up to over 100 kms. an hour. It started to lightning, thunder, hail and blow like mad and we took cover. The power went out for the rest of the evening but we were lucky ~ the town over from where we were at apparently had a tornado roll through that snapped signs over, flattened garden sheds and put some cars on their roofs. There is nothing like the fury of a prairie storm but we seem to have gotten only the fringe of it. For pictures of the storm, visit this link: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Gallery+More+Storm+Aftermath/1806690/story.html