CLEANING UP FROM THE STORM
‘One-in-25 year storm’ hits city hard
Residents and officials are still dealing with the aftermath of the large thunder and hailstorm that swept over the city Monday, pelting quarter-sized hailstones and dumping nearly 50 millimetres of rain in certain areas.
Throughout the evening, calls were rolling into Saskatoon’s customer service centre, with reports of surface flooding in both basements and streets resulting in the closure of affected intersections. The worst of this flooding occurring near the intersection at Confederation and Laurier – an area Angela Gardiner, Saskatoon’s acting general manager of transportation and utilities, said is already known to be prone to flooding during storms like this one.
There isn’t much the city can do about flooding intersections, but Gardiner said it has taken steps to avoid the bigger problems caused by the standing water.
“During any kind of intensive storm, you are going to have areas of the city that are low points that will experience some surface flooding . ... What we have done, is minimize the potential impact of the sanitary system and that is usually the most concerning part for homeowners in the area.”
Crews also responded on Monday to around 20 raised manhole covers, four major power outages at electricity feeder systems, and smaller single home outages throughout the city – affecting about 4,650 people.
Although able to deal with much of the damage Monday night, city crews were continuing to deal with issues into Tuesday, including assessments and repairs to damaged light and power infrastructure and the reopening of Melville Street which Gardiner said saw “significant flooding.”
The city’s parks department is also in the midst of assessing eight trees that were downed during the storm.
“This translates to a one-in-25 year storm in (the southern) portion of the city,” said Gardiner.
According to Environment Canada meteorologist Terri Lang, some areas of the city were hit harder than others with both rainfall and hail reports varying significantly.
The lowest reading came from the north end of the city which saw 10.2 mm of rainfall, only a fraction of the 49.3 mm reported in southern areas.
“The storm that came through Saskatoon was quite localized,” she said. “There were parts of the city that didn’t get any hail at all ... it seemed to be concentrated over the west and the southwest parts of the city. In some areas where they did see hail, it accumulated quite a bit and kind of looked like it had been snowing.”
Lang said the thing she found the most interesting about the storm was its continued persistence – a departure from Saskatchewan’s usual fast and heavy thunderstorms.
“It just kept developing on itself and not moving very fast out of the area. The lightning and thunder just kept going and going because the storm continued regenerating itself, and because of that we had 5,366 lightning strikes within 50 kilometres of Saskatoon,” she said.
Lang said the best tip she can give is to just be aware of the extreme weather watches and warnings since large storms over urban areas do have the potential to turn dangerous.
“My neighbours know, when Terri puts her car in the garage that it’s a warning sign for them. So, if we put that watch out that usually means we expect something to develop.”
The storm continued regenerating itself, and because of that we had 5,366 lightning strikes within 50 kilometres of Saskatoon.