Cold front brings snow, power outages to Saskatoon

Saskatoon woke up to snow, wind and power outages Wednesday morning.
 
A cold weather system out of Montana brought the first blast of winter to much of Saskatchewan overnight Tuesday, with the Bridge City seeing several centimetres of snow.
 
The weather strained the city’s power grid, with reports of multiple outages starting around 4 a.m. and continuing throughout the morning.
 
Grosvenor Park, Sutherland, Riversdale and Pleasant Hill were among the neighbourhoods affected. 
 
Outages caused traffic lights to go out at several intersections, which caused a few slowdowns, but no major accidents were reported and overall, road condition weren’t slippery as not much snow accumulated on the streets.
 
The City of Saskatoon provides regular updates on power outages on its website and through a dedicated Twitter account.  

Environment Canada chief meteorologist David Phillips said he sympathized with people in Saskatoon who weren’t quite ready to shovel walks and clear snow off windshields at this time of the year.

“This is something you’d expect in January, not October,” he said.

But Phillips said not to expect full-on winter just yet, he said highs should climb back into double digits around the middle of next week.

“Take out the snow shovel, but don’t put away the golf clubs,” he said.