Storms packing high winds down trees, damage buildings across southwestern Saskatchewan
The small town of Hazenmore in southern Saskatchewan is cleaning up Wednesday in the wake of strong storms that blew through the area overnight.
Hazenmore Mayor Gary Loverin said the storm developed quickly Tuesday evening. He was on the phone with his son when the wind started howling.
"We opened the front door and that scared the heck out of us," he said.
Loverin and his family went to the basement before he went back upstairs to take a peek.
"Stuff was flying everywhere," he said. "If you look at the grass outside our window the wind was coming from every direction, it looked like it was swirling."
He said people saw twisting clouds above the town, but as far as he knows nothing touched down.
Loverin said the west side of town had virtually no damage while the east side had trees knocked down and shingles ripped off roofs.
"There was one tree, probably two foot diameter, and it just snapped it off across the street, blocked the whole street."
Larry Wall, who manages the Co-op in town, said the storm came up quickly and left just as suddenly.
"This was literally just minutes," he said. "Everything blew really hard and it stopped"
SaskPower reported outages in Ogema, Pangman, Bengough, Ceylon, Parry, Lake Alma, Viceroy, Assiniboia, Willowbunch, Rockglen, Coronach and Hart.
Trees started falling
Hazenmore's Sharon Sobottka-Haubrich was sitting inside when the wind picked up.
"You could see a huge dust cloud rolling in," Sobottka-Haubrich said. "Little branches started falling and then bigger branches started falling and then bigger trees started falling. And then one of the trees hit a power line and sparks started flying off that."
She toured the town after the storm subsided and said a number of large trees had come down.
"Some were on top of people's roofs and some were blocking doorways," she said, adding a friend nearby lost several metal grain bins.
She said she lost some shingles and flower pots but otherwise her property escaped any major damage.
Beatrix Howe had a large part of a tree just miss her house and fall across her driveway.
She had been watching the clouds roll in from the south before going inside.
"All of a sudden we heard a crash, bang, boom, and I thought, 'OK ,it's just the furniture on the deck being moved around by the wind.'
"[But] it was one big branch off an old poplar that broke off. It missed the house, thank goodness, and it missed the deck so it's just [lying] across the street right now.
"It was a little scary because you can see the trees just bending right over, and you're thinking, oh gosh, don't let those break now too."
Kyle Hetherington, a storm chaser from Calgary who was physically following the storm, said there was good potential for tornadoes in southern Saskatchewan Tuesday night.
"It just turned into one giant squall line that went almost halfway across Montana," he said.
He tried to stay ahead of the storm, but it caught up to him and other storm chasers in Mankota, Sask., just down the road from Hazenmore.
"I think the weather station there had 140 km/h winds recorded so it was hard to drive when the actual line hit us," he said.
Soon after they travelled through Hazenmore.
"There [were] trees' branches all over the highway. And then we noticed some trees down in town.… There was pretty wild damage there," he said.
"There was a trampoline blown up in the trees. One house had a little shed that was rolled over, and then we started noticing some fairly significantly big trees that were knocked down, some on power lines."
He said the storm ranks up there with some of the bigger ones he has chased.
"I've chased [storms] in the States a couple of years, and it was right up there with some of the storms that I've chased down in the plains. One-hundred-and-forty kilometre hour winds are pretty significant winds."
Loverin said the town is organizing a cleanup Wednesday and hopes to have most of the debris cleared in a couple of days.
"Hopefully we get a good turnout and then it won't be quite as long as it's going to be. It's going to take some work. Thank God nobody was hurt."
