Strong winds leave parts of Saskatoon without power

Strong winds early on Monday morning buffeted Saskatoon, knocking out power for some parts of the city.

Around 5 a.m. winds reached 100 km/h, tearing some branches from trees and knocking down power lines.

Jose Cheruvallath, the metering and sustainability manager for the city, said between 8,000 and 9,000 Saskatoon Light and Power customers had their electricity services affected.

He said he expected all of the power to be restored by the end of the day.

A representative for SaskPower, the other electricity provider in the city, said he didn’t have the numbers for power outages in the city but said it was minimal.

Neither could provide an estimate for the cost of damages, though the city representative said major repairs to the power lines weren’t needed.

Ludwina Walduda was one of the residents whose property was affected.

“It was about 4:00 when I heard two bangs — loud — and I knew that it struck something,” she said.

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When she ventured outside of her house she saw part of a tree had been torn off and landed on her roof.

She told Global News the damage appeared to not be very severe.

Cory Calverley, operations manager for Sawyer’s Tree Services, said he and his teams were nearly overwhelmed by the number of calls they received, but that most of the structural damage was minimal.

“Calls have been coming in since about 6:30 this morning, we had a few overnight and we were out last night at 8:00 doing some of this work,” he told Global News.

He said the company was on alert but still didn’t expect the strength of the wind.

“Usually once every couple of years you get something like this.”

Global News meteorologist Peter Quinlan said gusts of wind can sometimes reach 100 km/h in the spring, which is the windiest season of the year, but that wind blowing that quickly on consecutive days is unusual.

“We basically get this transition between the cold arctic air and the warm pacific air that rolls through, and every time we get a transition between those two air masses we get that pressure gradient setting up… a big blustery wind that kicks up,” he said.

He said the strong winds would likely continue during the first week of June and that Saskatoon “will probably see more broken branches over the next few days.”

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