The first really vicious summer storm of 2011 swept through a wide portion of Saskatchewan July 3, with the Northwest not spared from the fury.
High temperatures and a frontal system cooked up the storms, which swept in around 6 p.m. Sunday.
The storm left several Northwest residents without power amid reports of downed power lines, debris and broken trees. While the Battlefords itself was not seriously affected, the same could not be said for the area north of the city, which took a direct hit from the storms that rolled in from Alberta.
Particularly hard-hit was the area around Turtleford up to Brightsand Lake Regional Park. Power was knocked out to that area and eyewitnesses reported several trees were toppled.
According to Noel Busse, spokesperson for SaskPower, the power was still down around the Turtleford area into Monday.
"There are still a few people, mostly rural, that don't have power in Turtleford," Busse said Monday afternoon.
He added he expected power to be restored there that afternoon. SaskPower was also working on the power situation at Brightsand Lake and he said SaskPower expected power to be back up later that evening.
SaskPower said a wide area of the province was hit initially with power outages as a result of the storm, including the North Battleford area. Busse said it was known that there were power outages in "Davidson, Saskatoon, North Battleford, Turtleford, Lloydminster, Shellbrook, Spiritwood, Meadow Lake, La Ronge, Wollaston, Beauval and Ile-a-la-Crosse".
The Regional Optimist went up to the Brightsand Lake area to check out the situation first-hand. There was plenty of evidence of widespread tree damage along Highway 26 starting around the Mervin area and getting worse past Turtleford. Some trees along the way were completely uprooted, while others suffered broken branches.
The Brightsand Lake Regional Park area was particularly hard-hit. One worker at the park described the scene as a "disaster area," with trees and branches down throughout. Power had been knocked out and was still down as of Monday afternoon.
She noted there was no shortage of volunteers who were called in to the park to help clean the area up and remove the debris.
By the time the Regional Optimist got there Monday afternoon, much progress seemed to have been made to clear the roads in the area. However, there were still plenty of uprooted trees, broken branches and debris seen scattered through the park.
SaskPower crews were seen working both inside and outside the park to try to restore power there. Work was also done to clear the roads into the Brightsand Lake and beach area.
While the Brightsand and Turtleford areas were badly hit, they were not the only ones affected by the storm system Sunday.
The system brought high winds, heavy rain and hail to much of the province, including Regina where start of the game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Eskimos were delayed for several minutes due to hail that landed on the field.
An area in the east central portion of the province also saw tornado watches issued Sunday afternoon. No funnel was officially confirmed to have touched down by Environment Canada, though there were unconfirmed reports a tornado may have landed in the Kronau area south of Regina Sunday.
