Rain overwhelms city drainage
Roads, homes inundated
A persistent heavy rainfall Tuesday trapped motorists on inundated streets, flooded basements and overwhelmed parts of the city’s drainage system.
A slow-moving low-pressure trough parked itself over the region much of the day, dumping rain on an already saturated city, said CTV meteorologist Josh Classen.
“The trough moved a little bit slower than we were anticipating, so the rain, instead of blasting through and lasting two or three hours, lasted six or seven hours through the day,” he said.
The city saw at least 20 millimetres in some areas and as much as 40 millimetres in others.
This month has also been wetter than the average June, with rain falling on 21 of 25 days so far, he added.
The city endured a similar situation in June 2011, when rain fell 22 days that month, leading to localized flooding in some areas.
On average it rains about 15 days of the month.
“In these years where you build up day after day, the rain just continues to come, the ground eventually can’t hold on to it,” Classen said. “And so when you get these big dumps of 20 to 40 mm of rain, the sewer system should be able to handle that, but … we’ve had for weeks now, rain falling in the area, it puts an extra load on them.”
The average monthly rainfall for Edmonton in June is 87 millimetres. So far this month, 111 millimetres has fallen in some areas, according to Environment Canada weather data.
The heavy rainfall forced road closures across the city, mainly on the north side of the river, along Groat Road and Yellowhead Trail.
A portion of 98th Avenue, near 96th Street in Cloverdale was also closed for several hours after an apparent drainage problem in the area.
The avenue was flooded for several hours, with water seeping into the garages and basements of the 22 condos in the La Caille Village complex, located between 92nd and 93rd Streets.
Jeremiah Townsend, president of the La Caille condo association, said he received several phone calls from residents about the flooding Tuesday morning.
Within hours of the first reports, there was about a third of a metre of water in the garages and basements of a majority of the condos. Firefighters sent to the scene advised residents to turn off their power and gas as a safety precaution.
The city managed to drain the street by mid-afternoon, after workers opened the gates connecting the storm sewer system to the river in Cloverdale.
Chris Ward, the branch manager of the city’s drainage services, said the gates had been closed because the North Saskatchewan River is at such a high level.
Townsend said if city crews had arrived earlier – around the time he called, approximately 11 a.m. – much of the damage to the condos could have been prevented.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the city received over 90 calls about street flooding and plugged catch basins, said Ward of drainage services.
Fire department spokesman Michael Tucker said fire crews rescued people from vehicles on flooded streets and issued a warning to stay away from the river after firefighters rescued four people on paddle boards.
The group was spotted on the river near the High Level Bridge around 3 p.m. Firefighters caught up with them near the Low Level Bridge, where they were ordered off the river because of the dangerous conditions. Firefighters have responded to four water rescues since the river began rising last Saturday.
The wet weather is expected to persist into Wednesday, with Environment Canada forecasting a 60-per-cent chance of showers throughout the day and the risk of a thunderstorm into the afternoon.
Temperatures are expected to reach the high 20s or low 30s by Sunday.