4 days ago
Saskatoon streets flooded after weekend storms
WATCH: Another summer storm swept through Saskatoon, leaving streets flooded and people in the dark.
WATCH: Another summer storm swept through Saskatoon, leaving streets flooded and people in the dark.
A sizable thunderstorm made its way through Saskatoon on Sunday night, and many residents felt the effects.
'Heavy rains like this in the summertime in particular... in cities, we do see urban flash flooding or pooling of water on the do see this happen in cities right across Canada,' said Crawford Luke, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Luke shared that depending on the area, Saskatoon saw between 23 to 37 millimeters of rain thanks to the storm.
Around 20,000 residents also experienced power outages after a bolt of lightning struck a power line, according to Saskatoon Light & Power.
'There's always a chance that our infrastructure will be impacted by severe weather,' Scott McGregor, a spokesperson for SaskPower said.
McGregor went on to say that lightning striking power lines is not uncommon, especially during July — the height of summer storm season.
'Usually whenever a lightning strike happens to one of our power lines, it throws a breaker, much like you would have inside of your home. If you were to plug something in incorrectly, it would throw the breaker on your panel so that's what happened with our transmission line' McGregor said.
As thunderstorm season settles into Saskatchewan, residents are reminded to be especially careful around damaged power lines,
'High winds, lightning, anything like that, there's a chance that people could come across anything like a damaged pole or down line, stay back a safe distance, we recommend 10 meters or 33 feet,' McGregor said.
Anyone who comes across a damaged power line or pole is asked to call the SaskPower outage centre or 911.
'There's no way of knowing if that line is electrified still or not,' McGregor said.
