REGINA – Wicked winds with gusts of up to 110 kilometres an hour whipped across southern Saskatchewan on Wednesday in the aftermath of stormy weather that battered the province for two days.
Environment Canada issued wind warnings for most of the southern half of the province, while SaskPower warned that electricity might still be spotty in some regions.
Power was knocked out to thousands of people in northern Saskatchewan after storms Monday downed transmission lines and steel towers. SaskPower said there were new outages in 22 communities after storms lashed the southern half of the province Tuesday.
By Wednesday morning, electricity had been restored in many areas, but officials warned it might not last.
“We consider this move right now a temporary solution,” said Mike Marsh, SaskPower vice-president of transmission and distribution.
“We are holding loads stable and we will continue to do that throughout the day.
“We just want to caution people that we may be into a period where we have to do some rotating outage in order to maintain stability … so just a caution that some communities in and around the (Prince Albert) area may experience outages for some periods of time.”
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Marsh said the rotating blackouts could last until Thursday afternoon.
About 40,000 people in the city of Prince Albert and surrounding area were left without power after the first storm. North Battleford, Meadow Lake and La Ronge were hit hard too. All had power restored Wednesday.
But new outages were reported in just about every region Wednesday. SaskPower said storms Tuesday knocked out electricity to Kipling, Grenfell, Radville, Weyburn, Fort Qu’appelle, Sturgis, Melville, the rural area around Yorkton, Kamsack, Madge Lake, Humboldt, Outlook, Nipawin, parts of Regina, rural areas around Regina, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, parts of Lloydminster, Unity, Rosetown, Tisdale and Melfort.
“We have crews dealing with high-priority items first,” said Marsh.
“What that means is we deal with our high-voltage transmission lines to try to re-establish our network in the province, and then we look at ways of providing alternate paths for the energy to get into communities so that we can get some power on wherever we can.”
Marsh said high winds and blowing trees Wednesday would affect the effort to reconnect some communities. The cleanup was also being hampered by fields and roads that were soaked by heavy rain.
“Some of the areas that were most heavily damaged are also very flooded and very, very wet, so we’re moving specialized equipment into those areas … and we’re doing our best to get to the scene where we have to do the repair.”
Marsh said there was no way to prevent the infrastructure damage. Transmission and distribution facilities are designed to very high standards, he said.
“They withstand a tremendous amount of wind activity and rain, ice and snow,” said Marsh.
“But at times we have significant challenges from localized weather patterns which cause extreme disturbances and there’s nothing you can do to prevent Mother Nature in that kind of situation.”
Environment Canada said most of the region would see sustained winds of 70 kilometres an hour on Wednesday in addition to the gusts. Rainfall warnings were also in place Wednesday for areas in west-central Saskatchewan near the Alberta boundary, including Maidstone, North Battleford and Meadow Lake.
Duane McKay, Saskatchewan’s commissioner of emergency management, said a violent plow wind also downed about 1,000 trees in Duck Mountain Provincial Park. Similar reports were coming in from forested areas across the province, he said.
RCMP said high winds also caused a semi-tractor to tip over while crossing an overpass on the Trans-Canada Highway at Belle Plaine, between Regina and Moose Jaw. The driver wasn’t hurt.
The strong blasts blew the roof right off of an IGA grocery store in Humboldt. A woman who saw it happen said parts just began lifting and blew into the back alley. The damage forced the store to close.
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