Another round of wet weather expected to soak the province

Just days after some areas in southern Saskatchewan experienced heavy rain and wicked winds Saturday, Environment Canada’s Terri Lang said they can expect more water across the province in the days to come.

“It looks like the next risk for severe weather for the province is Thursday into Friday,” Lang said Tuesday.

Warm, humid air coming up from the south has resulted in thunderstorms in the forecast.

Environment Canada predicts a chance of thundershowers starting Tuesday in Saskatoon and heading well into next week. Regina will see a lower chance of showers starting Tuesday, but ending before the weekend.

On Saturday, the first tornado in Canada in 2023 touched down five minutes southeast of Regina, causing major destruction to a farmyard.

Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed it didn’t issue a warning until seven minutes after the tornado touched down due to broken equipment at the radar station in Bethune.

Lang confirmed the equipment is now ready for the next flash of weather.

“It was fixed (Monday) and it has been up and running since (Monday) afternoon,” she said.

Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Northern Tornado Project also changed the tornado’s rating from EF-0 to an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale after conducting a storm survey.

In a Twitter post, the Northern Tornado Project explained the rating change was due to higher wind speeds. The one that touched down outside of Regina had winds at 150 kilometres per hour.

An NTP survey team has investigated the damage from Saturday's tornado near Regina, SK. The only significant damage was to a well-constructed farm building – rated at max 150 km/h / EF1. Debris was blown up to 2.5 km to the NNE.

Full details at https://t.co/QPSdxuTdgA #SKstorm pic.twitter.com/T0jerQFNj6

— Northern Tornadoes Project (@westernuNTP) May 30, 2023

Lang said sweeping out downspouts and aiming them towards the streets should be people’s top priority before the next wave of storm hits. She also encouraged people to be wary of lightning, saying lightning kills and injures more Canadians each year than tornadoes do.

Despite wet weather looming, there will be high temperatures in the high 20s until the end of the week.