Hot temperatures sent Edmonton residents out into the sun to enjoy the heat Friday. Many took to the river valley to bike, run and walk.
“I’m going out for a walk,” Callais McBride said, “just enjoying it. We are gonna meet up with some friends downtown.”
“I can’t complain, it’s a beautiful day. I’d rather be out here than working inside,” Kelsie Norton said.
Edmonton broke a temperature record Friday, reaching 28.6 C. That beat the 106-year-old record for May 5 of 28.3 C set in 1911.
The heat may also push residents out onto patios, and there may now be an app to help them.
George Shantz, a NAIT student, started working on Patio Buzz six months ago. The app centralizes data about patios across the city.
Shantz said the app includes maps to help people find the patio closest to them. It also includes comments from other users and pictures.
“We’re trying to link all the patios in Edmonton because, man, there are so many amazing patios out right now.
“There are so many hidden ones — the big ones on Jasper and Whyte — but the back ones that people don’t go to,” he said.
The app, which will be released mid-May, includes 140 patios in Edmonton so far. Shantz said the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
“It’s been so awesome out — this is patio weather. In Edmonton, there’s so much great patios, to have them open this week, it’s so good.”
The heat is a relief to Sean Milne, the owner of Seanic Landscape Construction. The landscape season kicked off later than normal because of soggy weather in recent weeks.
“It just means a later start, it means the phone died when it snowed a couple weeks ago,” he said.
The wet ground also meant problems for his crews.
“It limits the materials you can get — topsoil and stuff like that — if it’s been really wet. Sod farms too, if they’re flooded out from snow… they can’t cut until things are dry so it does put us back a little bit,” he said.
Milne said it’s likely the season will run until late fall, which should make up for the late start.
The weather had city crews out and about as well. Kristen Wagner, spokesperson for the City of Edmonton, said the cold, wet weather had an impact on the work crews could do.
Wagner said repairs slowed down as a result since roads need to be dry for potholes to be filled.
Crews are now filling 900 potholes a day. But numbers are down from last year. So far, in April, 27,000 potholes were filled; in April last year, 63,000 potholes were filled.
And from January to April of this year, crews filled 50,000 potholes; that’s half of what crews did during the same time in 2016.