Skydivers weather storm to wrap up Alberta championships in Westlock

Heavy rain, winds, thunder and lightning grounded Alberta's top skydivers in Westlock Sunday — but only temporarily.

With the same determination, and patience, it takes to train for high-level competition, the athletes spent the morning in Edmonton Skydive's hangar waiting for the storm to pass so that they could complete the sport accuracy portion of the provincial competition.

Obviously, we need to be able to see the ground before we're jumping out of the airplane.- Joey Allen

Joey Allen, one of the co-ordinators of the event, said that there were a few conditions that have to be met for jumpers to go up in the tiny propeller plane.

"Obviously, we need to be able to see the ground before we're jumping out of the airplane to make sure that we're over top of the drop zone," Allen said, noting that means the clouds had to clear and the wind had to stop gusting.

On Friday and Saturday, when the championships kicked off, weather conditions didn't pose as much of a problem.

Skydivers competed in events like formation, joining together to make shapes in the air; wingsuiting, where their suits actually open up and allow them to glide; and canopy piloting, where they swoop using their parachutes.

Veteran skydiver Peter Kozach, from Calgary, won the canopy piloting competition.

After 4,000 jumps, he can still remember his first one.

"It was definitely high energy, high adrenaline, super scared kind of a thing, but then as the parachute opened up and I did the jump, I thought, 'Wow, this is awesome. I'm going to come back and do it again,' " he said. "And then I did that pretty much ongoing for the next 15 years."