Spring storm brings wind, snow and rain to southwest Sask.
CBC
Much of southwestern Saskatchewan bore the brunt of an early spring storm Tuesday after a low pressure system brought strong winds, wet snow and rain.
Snow began falling in the overnight hours before northwest winds picked up, causing whiteout conditions during Tuesday's morning commute.
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) issued a wind warning for the southwest corner of the province, saying northwest winds could gust as high as 90 km/h through the day.
"High winds may toss loose objects or cause tree branches to break," the alert read.
Terri Lang, a warning preparedness meteorologist with ECCC, said forestry weather stations at the west block of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park and at Climax reported gusts around 100 km/h Tuesday morning. She said many of ECCC's own weather stations were knocked offline due to power issues.
Snowfall of five to 15 centimetres is possible, with the heaviest amounts falling in the Cypress Hills area. Rain of five to 10 millimetres is also possible in the region.
Lang said places with higher elevations, like the Cypress Hills, often get more snow. This time around, northwest winds also created "upslope flow" — winds forced up an elevated surface — which enhanced the amount of snow falling.
The Trans-Canada Highway was also closed for a period of time from the Alberta border to north of Maple Creek mid-Tuesday morning, as motorists reported poor conditions on most roads in the area.
SaskPower reported numerous outages caused by toppled lines. Power was restored in some places as of Tuesday afternoon, but was still out in many others, including Maple Creek and Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.
An outage at the water treatment plant in Maple Creek prompted the town to ask residents to conserve water use. An alert put out by the town around 11:00 a.m. CST Tuesday said repair could take 24 hours at minimum.
"Without power, the water treatment plant is unable to treat water to maintain a supply," the message read.
Residents have been asked to avoid using "unnecessary, large quantities of water," such as water for dishwashers, showers and laundry.
Irene Ahner farms northeast of Maple Creek. Her home lost power between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. CST Tuesday and had been running on generator power. She said visibility at her farm was down to less than a kilometre late Tuesday morning.
"Things are actually totally white here," said Ahner.
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