Heavy rain and marble-sized hail led to flash flooding in Prince Albert on Sunday afternoon.
Environment Canada issued an alert around 3:15 p.m., warning those in the city that the downpour could cause water to pool on the roads – and it did. Soon enough, videos and photos began circulating on social media.
One video shows water and hail running through the Superstore parking lot. The post describes having to “wade through knee-high ice water” in order to get to their vehicle.
The person who posted the video also said they witnessed a car go through a red light and almost hit their vehicle.
“It was floating! No driver control,” the post reads.
Around that same area on 15th Street, vehicles were seen trudging through water that, in some cases, reached their headlights.
Troy Parenteau was at home when the storm hit. He peered out the window, keeping an eye on his beloved garden filled with Saskatchewan native flowers, along with at least $400 of potted plants.
He wasn’t too worried when the hail started falling, but it quickly pelted his backyard.
“There was nothing that I could do but watch hail probably twice the size of a marble or so, maybe the size of a toonie, start to land in and around the yard and gardens,” he said.
“By that time, it had done lots of terrible damage.”
Parenteau’s native flower garden includes brown-eyed susans, long fruited anemone, blue flax, echinacea, sage and sweetgrass. For the first time, he had grown the provincial flower, western red lilies.
“I had 16 of them sprout and they’re actually quite a delicate flower. I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to bring them up and I had three that had survived their second leaf – they got destroyed yesterday.”
Parenteau said he had been working on sprouting the lilies since February.
“It was disheartening,” he described.
“I just brushed it off the shoulder and told myself ‘Well, sure, you’ve invested a lot of money and time. We’ll see what comes back, and if things don’t come back, I guess we’re just going to have to try again next year.’ Such is nature and such is life.”
Shawn Hradec-Bayko has been storm chasing in the Prince Albert area for four years.
“I’ve never witnessed anything like that before, it was unbelievable,” he said.
Hradec-Bayko described the entirety of the storm, starting off with little warning to water flooding the streets.
“I went on my radar to track and the storm and, all of the sudden, we were in the green and then, all of the sudden, we were in the red,” he said.
“It just started blacking, clouding and then rumbling of thunder and then it just started pouring down, hail three times in a row. I have never experienced in my life having three hail storms in one huge storm.”
The city’s public works department said there was no significant damage from the storm. The city did, however, experience some washed out gravel and lots of leaves and branches that cluttered the streets and catch basins.
A Facebook post said crews are working to clear the debris.
The post asked residents to ensure the grids of catch basins are cleared in order to improve drainage. It also said not to sweep debris on to the street to prevent any flooding in the future.
The fire department responded to a call shortly before 4 p.m. on Sunday for a report of a power line down on the 2300 block of First Avenue West.
“It was found that a tree had fallen during a storm and ripped a power line off a house. There was no arcing or fire on arrival,” said a post on the department’s Facebook page.
SaskPower repaired the line.
SaskPower’s media spokesperson, Scott McGregor, said there was “nothing out of the ordinary” that resulted from the storm. SaskPower did not respond to any outages, he said.
