Sask. Village of Aylsham declares state of emergency after 'unprecedented' windstorm

A severe windstorm has left significant damage over east Saskatchewan. Power outages over a wide area are being reported by residents.

Sask. Village of Aylsham declares state of emergency after 'unprecedented' windstorm Extreme weather conditions left 50,000 people without power for days A severe weekend windstorm left significant damage in a wide swath of east Saskatchewan. The village of Aylsham near Nipawin has declared a state of emergency due to the impact of the extreme weather.

The village reported widespread damage throughout the community, including power outages, damage to the municipal water system, flooding, fallen trees, and other hazardous conditions. Jaymee Olesen is a resident and owner of the Aylsham Inn Bar & Grill in Aylsham. She said the weather last weekend was unprecedented.

“I was really scared. This was by far the worst windstorm that I've ever experienced since I've been in Saskatchewan,” she said. The windstorm affected a wide area of east Saskatchewan, including Spirit Wood, Shellbrook, Prince Albert, Nipawin, Hudson Bay and Tisdale.

Residents also reported power outages, some lasting for days after the storm. SaskPower said the outage has affected a total of 50,000 customers all across that region. “So we're able to get most of the customers back on there.

At this point there's still about 200 customers that are without power,” said Joel Cherry, spokesperson for SaskPower on Tuesday afternoon. - Sask. town cleans up after 'intense' weekend windstorm - Sask. almost doubles its average tornado number Olesen said the outage was very harmful for her business.

“Most people only have a fridge full of food, where I have walk-in freezers, prep tables, 2 fridges all full of stock,” said Olesen. She said by 4:30 Tuesday the power was back on the village, so now she’ll focus on starting inventories and assessing the overall damage. Late Tuesday afternoon, the village posted on Facebook simply, "We now have water."

Cherry says they are working as fast as possible to get the power back to all their clients, but this has been an outlier event. “During the past seven days, SaskPower had more outages than any other seven days, for the past four years,” said Cherry. He also said SaskPower expects to get the power back to the remaining areas by the end of the day.

For any outage updates in the Nipawin and surrounding areas residents can visit saskpower.com/outages. With files from Jeremy Warren