Kipling sees rain, hail, and strong winds from severe thunderstorm

Most areas in southern Saskatchewan felt something from the storm that passed through on Sunday - here in Estevan, that consisted mostly of wind that whipped up trees and only broke a few branches.

Up north the system was much more severe, with multiple communities along highway 1 feeling the full impact.

That includes Kipling, which saw a whole lot of the weather that brought damage to the town.

The town's CAO, Gale Dakue, says they had a lot to clean up the next day.

"We saw very high winds and a lot of hail that broke a lot of very big trees. We have trees down pretty much everywhere, we lost power for what I would say is about 8 hours. We sustained some of the damage out at our ball diamonds, a couple of our dugouts were taken away by the wind."

Dakue says she also saw a good amount of private damage as well throughout the town. 

The hail was so ever-present in the community that it even caused problems with draining the rain.

"Quite a bit of rain - the system was a little bit slow to drain because there was quite a bit of hail." 

Dakue describes seeing toonie-sized hail on the ground afterward, and some people have been reporting fist-sized hail along the path of the storm.

The clean-up effort has now begun as the town has downed trees and branches just about everywhere.

"It's a mess right now. There are a lot of trees down right now, and our town crews are working and have been working very hard to cut back the trees that are causing any kind of a road hazard. We'll start with those ones and move our way back to the other ones that need to move," said Dakue, "Right now there's just a lot of debris on the streets and in the parks."

Dakue says that people were startled by the wind at first and have since 

"I think most were in shock at first - the wind was very, very high. After they started coming out of their houses they started cleaning up and talking to other people. So I think there was just sort of a feeling of happiness that everyone was safe."

She says that while there were some clouds swirling in the area, no tornadoes were reported.