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Many people in and around Saskatoon spent Tuesday tidying up and assessing damage after Monday’s hailstorm and heavy rains.
Carol Whitecalf said the siding on her home in the RM of Corman Park was shredded by loonie-sized hailstones.
“The best I can describe it, it looked like it was bullet holes right from one end of the house to the other on the north side,” she said.
Along with the damage to her home, Whitecalf said she was horrified when she inspected her yard in the aftermath of the storm.
“There was ankle-deep water. I walked around the house and saw my garden is no longer. And all of my trees that had just nicely got leaves back from the caterpillars are all stripped,” she said.
Whitecalf said she planned to make an insurance claim for the damage to her home.
Meanwhile, hailstones were still piled up on lawns in the Montgomery Place neighbourhood on Saskatoon’s southwestern edge.
Lots of unmelted hail remains the day after in #yxe Montgomery neighbourhood. @CKOMNews pic.twitter.com/nJP9gll1oE
— Chris Carr (@ChrisCarr15) July 11, 2017
Hail still on the ground in yxe’s Montgomery the day after @CKOMNews pic.twitter.com/Toi8naKDcj
— Chris Carr (@ChrisCarr15) July 11, 2017
Sharon Sallosy lives in the neighbourhood. She said she watched as the storm came in, paying close attention as rain and hail started and water began pouring into her backyard.
Sallosy and her husband then braved the elements to do what they could to save their property.
“I was watching (the water) rise up the back patio towards the house and once it hit the welcome mat, I suggested we get the pump out,” Sallosy said. “We were out in the rain, pumping it into the front ditched so it could drain away.”
Her vegetable garden was badly damaged and the roof of her house will also need to be repaired.
A ‘ONE-IN-25-YEAR’ STORM
Environment Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said the southern and western parts of Saskatoon were hit hardest by the storm.
They received around 50 millimetres, or two inches, of rain, while the northern and eastern areas received between 10-20 millimetres.
The bulk of the rain fell in a 90-minute span.
Lightning strikes also hammered the region, with 5,466 recorded within 50 kilometres of the city.
Saskatoon’s fire department said they responded to four calls of flames sparked by lightning throughout the storm.
City of Saskatoon officials provided a post-storm update on Tuesday afternoon.
Angela Gardiner, acting general manager of transportation and utilities, called Monday’s storm a one-in-25-year event.
However, she said the city had not had any reports of flooding to people’s homes.
Water and sewer engineering manager Galen Heinrichs said flooding was apparent Monday on various streets throughout the city’s south and west, particularly in older communities.
While he said he understood people’s frustrations about chronic flooding at trouble spots like the intersection of Laurier Drive and Confederation Drive, he said there was a limit on what kind of solutions could be put in place, given older areas were designed and built using less rigorous standards than the ones currently employed in newer areas.
“Frankly, you’re pretty limited in what you can do, because the streets are already there and everything’s been placed where it’s already been placed. So you do what you can to reduce the severity and the frequency of those events,” he said.
The city issued a statement on the possibility of further storm activity up to around 8 p.m. Tuesday, with the weather expected to clear after then.