REGINA — Strong winds are expected for a good chunk of southern Saskatchewan on Thursday.
Environment Canada has issued a yellow warning for wind as gusts increase throughout Thursday morning.
“We're going to see widespread 70-kilometre-an-hour winds with gusts to 90, even 100 kilometres an hour over portions of southern Saskatchewan,” said Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) meteorologist Danielle Desjardins.
Desjardins said winds are expected to be the strongest around noon. in the western portion of the province and early afternoon in southeastern Saskatchewan.
With strong winds, Desjardins spoke on the risks from the storm.
“One being [that] any loose objects are at risk of being tossed around,” she said.
Desjardins added, “There's always going to be a risk of some power outages due to the strength of the winds and also any tree branches could snap off due to strong winds such as these.”
Later on, Environment Canada expects areas of Saskatchewan to see temporary reduced visibility from snow, including Regina, Weyburn, Estevan and possibly Yorkton.
Visibility from the wind isn’t expected to be a major factor as the province has seen above 0 C temperatures over the past few days.
“Because there has been some snow melt and snow has crusted over, there is not a lot of snow on the ground to blow around, nor is there a lot of falling snow. So that's one of the reasons why we're not expecting those widespread reductions in visibility due to blowing snow,” said Desjardins.
Strong winds are expected to continue through the evening and overnight hours before a reduction beginning tomorrow morning in the west and then the afternoon in the east.
