By Jessie Weisner/Charles Lefebvre

Thunderstorm causes flash flooding in Medicine Hat

Jun 27, 2019 | 5:14 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Medicine Hat was hit by a severe thunderstorm Thursday afternoon.

The storm rolled in shortly after 12:30 p.m., and included hail, strong winds and more than 34 millimetres of rainfall in Medicine Hat.

According to Environment Canada, a line of thunderstorms moved up from Montana through the night and intensified around noon on Thursday.

Extreme hail, wind and rain hit the city shortly after.

“The airport in Medicine Hat at 1:09 p.m. gusted to 96 kilometres an hour and the weather station by Seven Persons at 12:37 p.m. gusted to 102 kilometres an hour as that storm came through,” says Blaine Lowry, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Since then, city officials have been working to rectify the result of the storm.

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The extreme weather caused nine localized power outages across the city, multiple downed tree branches and road closures.

The localized flooding also delayed some Medicine Hat Transit bus routes. Shuttles were put in place to pick up residents.

The Medicine Hat fire department also responded to multiple calls of stranded vehicles and flooded basements.

In some areas, such as Hatcher Drive, firefighters were pushing vehicles in waist deep water.

However, storm sewers are still fully functional.

“So there’s some localized flooding and the storm sewers are running fine, they’re just overloaded with the actual quantity of water that we’ve had in the last couple of hours so things should get back to normal pretty quickly,” says Jason Wheeler, health and safety coordinator with the City of Medicine Hat. “Our people are out there making it right as best as they can.”

Pockets of rain remain around the city, and an additional thunderstorm may be rolling into Medicine Hat before 9 p.m. Thursday.

“There’s another line of storms that’s formed in Montana currently kind of down around the Helena area which is still a number of hours out, those are expected to more North, Northeast as well through the day,” says Lowry. “There is a chance that they stay just south of Medicine Hat area but if they do move through it will probably be later this evening.”

Wheeler says he’s prepared to call in extra help if needed.

“We are kind of ready 24 hours so people don’t really have to worry about that and at the moment I’m the deputy director so if we needed to step up and bring people in for extra help, we can do that,” says Wheeler.