Windstorm knocks out power, traffic lights across Edmonton

Strong winds knocked down trees and power lines and caused traffic signal outages across Edmonton on Saturday as Environment Canada kept a wind warning in place for large parts of central and southern Alberta, CBC News and CTV News Edmonton reported.

Fortis Alberta, which serves communities around the city, said on social media that it was experiencing “high call volumes and longer than normal” customer service wait times as outages grew through the afternoon, CTV reported. The utility said restoration estimates would follow.

Searches for power outages in Edmonton topped 20,000 in Canada on Saturday, according to Google Trends.

A City of Edmonton spokesperson told CBC that the winds had brought down trees and darkened traffic signals across the city. The city advised drivers to treat intersections with dark signals as four-way stops and to report fallen branches or signal problems to 311. CBC reported that one tree was blown into power lines in the Gold Bar neighbourhood, near 50th Street and 102nd Avenue.

Environment Canada forecast gusts of up to 90 km/h in central and east-central Alberta and up to 100 km/h in the far south of the province, warning of possible damage to roofs, fences and tree branches and difficult driving for high-sided vehicles, CBC reported. CTV said gusts were expected to reach 100 km/h in parts of Edmonton. The weather agency said the winds were expected to ease Saturday evening.

The wind delayed a pro-independence rally outside the Alberta legislature by an hour, organizer Keith Wilson of Let Alberta Decide told CBC, two days before the province’s referendum. Earlier in the week, a separate windstorm on Wednesday left more than 10,000 customers in central and northern Alberta without power and closed two advance voting stations, CTV and CBC reported.

Saturday’s winds also fanned a major fire at CFB Wainwright, about 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, where the defence minister confirmed deaths and injuries after an explosion and fire. Our earlier forecast story covered the wind warning for southwestern Alberta.

EPCOR and Fortis Alberta post current outages on their online outage maps.

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Sources: CBC News; CTV News Edmonton; Environment and Climate Change Canada; Google Trends Canada.