Sask. cleaning up after devastating weather weekend

The province is cleaning up and gathering itself after a scorching weekend with some wild and dangerous weather.

Many parts of the province stayed under a blanket of heat warnings throughout the weekend, while daily highs stayed in the 30 C range.

Friday brought a day of active weather with large hail, heavy rain and at least one tornado confirmed by Environment Canada.

Warnings for severe storms were also put out Friday afternoon.

The town of Grenfell, about 120 kilometres east of Regina along the Trans-Canada Highway, was one of the areas walloped by the weather.

Grenfell Mayor Rod Wolfe was watching the radar Friday night. He saw it change from green to purple in about 15 minutes.

“It developed really really quickly,” Wolfe said, adding the past four days have been very difficult for the town.

The mayor said Grenfell was pummeled by a stormy night with incredible winds that he heard hit the 190-kilometre-per-hour range.

“I think it was a giant plow wind that went through the area,” Wolfe said.

He said power went out in Grenfell around 10 p.m. on Friday and wasn’t restored until Sunday afternoon.

The town’s damage is significant. Dozens, if not hundreds, of trees have been downed, causing personal damage to vehicles and houses.

Grenfell’s arena lost about a third of its roof, ripped off by the wind. Wolfe said it was over the arena portion rather than the canteen, which he called “a bit of a blessing, I guess.”

The town’s campground is also “devastated,” according to the mayor.

Trees still litter the streets and yards and Wolfe said the town is taking the damage “day by day,” but estimates the cleanup efforts will take weeks.

“Our dump’s been pretty much 20 hours a day with residents bringing trees out,” Wolfe said. “The fortunate thing is nobody’s been hurt or killed through any of this.”

Wolfe attributed “99 per cent” of the damage to the wind.

“It basically took a swath through here four, five miles wide, damaging nearby farms and everything, too,” he said.

While he said they do see storm damage occasionally, Wolfe said Grenfell is often lucky to avoid major weather disasters.

“We like to think we’ve avoided most of it over the years,” he shared.

After the events of the weekend, the mayor said with a chuckle he’s feeling “very tired.”

“But we’ll wake up every morning, take it one day at a time and as small-town Saskatchewan is, everyone bands together and does their part,” he said. “We’ll get through it.”

Wolfe doesn’t have any estimates yet for the cost to repair the arena roof but said the town will be consulting with insurance and then getting a contractor to come in and get the roof back and secured.

“It’s been quite the weekend,” Wolfe said.

Grenfell wasn’t the only part of the province that got walloped this weekend.

SGI spokesperson Tyler McMurchy said hail and wind also hit Buffalo Pound, Marquis, Avonhurst, Wapella, Allen and northwest Regina.

More than 230 auto claims were made from the storms this weekend in the province — 211 of those were from hail damage.

Thirty property claims of the 91 SGI received this weekend were also because of hail.

In Saskatoon, the city’s parks department has received about 50 calls about downed trees and branches over the weekend.