A busy Friday of weather activity in Saskatchewan.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Jesse Wagar says there were three reports of tornadoes throughout the day – one just after 11 a.m. near Allan, which was later confirmed.
A second report of a tornado came around 1p.m. near Young, and a 3rd report around 8:30 p.m. near Edgeley – these two are being investigated by Environment Canada.
Wagar says the storm complex kept going for another two hours to the southeast, bringing strong wind gusts.
In Grenfell, there was reports of winds as high as 178km/h, though Wagar took that number with a grain of salt.
“That seems excessively high, normally when we get these straight-line wind events that go through, you can get wind gusts up to 120 kilometres per hour, potentially a little bit stronger than that,” Wagar said.
Pictures on social media around Grenfell show damage to a grain elevator, other buildings and some downed trees.
It also caused power outages to a large area of the southeast region. SaskPower crews are working to restore power to many communities in the southeast, including Broadview, Wolseley, Montmartre, Kendal and all surroundings areas.
Updates from SaskPower and a map of outage areas can be found here.
(Photos courtesy: Scott McGregor | Facebook)