Heat warnings blanket Regina and eastern Saskatchewan

Environment Canada issued widespread heat warnings on Sunday morning for parts of central and eastern Saskatchewan, including Regina.

An air mass is expected to bring hot and humid conditions to the region for the next few days, according to the weather office.

“For the next couple to few days, it’s going to be quite hot,” Environment Canada meteorologist Shannon Moodie said. “We are expecting Tuesday (or) Wednesday that things will moderate slightly.

“But when I say ‘moderate slightly,’ even towards midweek, we’re still expecting temperatures to be in the high 20s. The one nice thing is that those overnight lows will cool down a bit.”

Moodie said the criteria for heat warnings is two days in a row with daytime highs of at least 32 C and lows of at least 16 C.

She noted that with heat comes the chance of nasty weather, like that which hit the province on Saturday.

“We are looking at another potential round of severe weather for Saskatchewan (on Sunday),” Moodie said.

The storms that blew across the province Saturday prompted tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings and severe thunderstorm watches.

Moodie said Environment Canada saw a Facebook post about a tornado touching down briefly north of Neptune, a community southwest of Weyburn.

She said the weather service also got reports of pea-sized hail in Vibank and Yorkton, a 91-kilometre-per-hour wind gust in Estevan, and 41 millimetres of rain in one hour and 65 mm in four hours in Coronach.

Many areas of the province have been battered by weather systems in recent days, which Moodie said was out of the ordinary.

“It’s definitely an early start …” she said. “Usually we don’t really get this kind of weather until late June (or early) July. It’s definitely unique that it is starting so early.”