Saskatchewan held true to its slogan of land of living skies on Wednesday. There were weather watches and warnings across many parts of south and central Saskatchewan, and Environment Canada confirms that three tornados touched down.
Meteorologist Eric Dykes says they hit near Manitou Beach, Cymric, which is about 100 kilometres north of Regina, and Foam Lake. He adds that Highway 16 was closed for awhile because of grain bins on the road, and there was a gas leak a couple kilometres west of Foam Lake at a farm.
The first confirmed tornado was just after three in the afternoon near Manitou, then the second one was in the Foam Lake area, followed by the third near Cymric. It wasn’t just tornados, though. Dykes says there were plenty of reports of hail as well, starting near Eatonia around three in the afternoon, then at Jansen there was nickel-sized hail and then baseball-sized hail near Dafoe, which the metorologist says is the biggest this province has received.
SaskPower crews reported to power outages in the Wadena, Wynyard, Foam Lake and surrounding areas. Just before 6:30 p.m. SaskPower posted on social media that power had been restored to Wadena, Wynyard, Green Water and surrounding areas, but the Foam Lake Sub Station was still off, and around 10:30 p.m. crews stopped for the night for safety reasons and will be back at it around 8 p.m. this morning.
Photos and videos posted to social media late Wednesday afternoon show a tornado near Watrous.
Douglas Thomas of Watrous posted a series of videos showing the twister on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
Another twister video from this afternoon near Watrous/Manitou pic.twitter.com/y9tvjc5qZM
— Douglas Thomas (@winstonwildcat) June 29, 2022
The area was under a severe thunderstorm warning for most of the afternoon Wednesday. Below are photos that were submitted to The Watrous Manitou and were shared on the 98 Cool Facebook page.
Below is a video posted to Twitter showing the view from the Manitou Regional Campground.
Tornado touchdown at Manitou regional campground near Watrous 10 mins ago 😳😳😳😳 #skstorm
Thankfully disappeared quick. pic.twitter.com/5MkekPzsf2
— Chris Bauer (@Chris_bauer_LL) June 29, 2022
