Environment

Tornadoes hit southern Saskatchewan

by Rob Peters | July 11, 2008 at 01:10 pm

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At least three tornadoes swept through southern Saskatchewan Thursday night, resulting in the evacuation of more than 100 homes and power outages in several communities. No injuries or deaths have been reported, but many homes and buildings were damaged.

SASKATOON — Several Saskatchewan communities are cleaning up after violent storms ripped off roofs, knocked down power-lines and sent baseball-sized hail shooting from the sky.

Bob Cormier, a spokesman with Environment Canada, says the original storm cell started dropping hail on the town of Dafoe.

The storm then took a track along Highway 16, and three tornadoes touched down near Kandahar, Stoughton and Dollard.

There are no reports of injuries.

High winds in Carlyle also knocked down power lines, turned over a mobile home and contributed to a gas leak, resulting in the evacuation of more than 100 homes.

In Yorkton, RCMP say wind ripped most of the roof off a storage facility and blew it a block away.

Carlyle was one of 18 communities that lost power for periods during the storm, SaskPower reported. Others affected were Yorkton, Weyburn, Biggar, Swift Current, Melfort, Tisdale and Carrot River.

Several buildings in Yorkton were also damaged by the storm, although Environment Canada is not sure whether it was a tornado or a plough wind that battered the city.

The southwestern town of Maple Creek also got pummelled by hail and wind during Thursday's storm.

Town administrator Mark Caswell said the marble-sized hailstones rained down on the town for 10 to 15 minutes.

It was the worst storm to hit the Maple Creek area in a decade, he said.