Stephen Berg, meteorologist with Environment Canada says the weather system that spawned a tornado in Alberta on Canada Day caused damage for a sustained period of time in Saskatchewan as well. He says it was approximately a nine hour west-to-east storm.

He says it moved into Saskatchewan midafternoon July 1st and produced golf ball sized hail in The Battlefords, Meadow Lake and Lloydminster area. It continued to move eastward into the evening producing more hail which was nickle, quarter and loonie sized.  Nickle and quarter sized hail was also reported in Choiceland.

Berg says then it really morphed into a wind event with a 96 kilometre an hour wind gust recorded in North Battleford.  And there was a plough wind at Nipawin where a wind speed of up to 119 kilometres per hour was recorded.   Rosthern reported snapped trees and fallen lamp posts while St. Brieux had downed trees and what he describes as threshold damage. Waskesiu also reported trees either snapped or completely uprooted.

Because of that storm there has been a large and sustained power outage for, at one point, as many as 20,000 customers in Saskatchewan. Scott McGregor with SaskPower says a high voltage transmission structure was damaged.  As of noon on Tuesday there were still 2,000 people without power. The outage stretched from Canwood, north of Prince albert, Carrot River, Waskesiu Lake, Candle Lake, Nipawin, Melfort, Tisdale, all the way to the Manitoba border. McGregor suggests customers keep on eye on SaskPower’s Twitter feed or website outage page to see when power is expected to come back online.

Scott McGregor with SaskPower says there is no way to know if the line is energized and if anyone sees a downed line, stay back at least 10 metres or 33 feet and give their outage centre a call at 310-2220.