Highway 1 lane scheduled to reopen at 1 a.m., rainfall warning continues

Water had risen over the road in the Kin Coulee dip and Volker Stevin drained it out.

A rainfall warning remained in place late Tuesday for much of southeastern Alberta, extending into the southwest corner of Saskatchewan.

Widespread rainfall totals of 40 to 70 mm are expected by the time the rain tapers off on Wednesday, according to Environment Canada.

The single day rainfall record for Medicine Hat is 40.1 millimetres, set in May 1901.

Alberta Environment is monitoring the storm, but notes rainfall is expected to relatively moderate, giving the soil time to absorb higher amounts of precipitation, leading to less water in streams and a slower increase in water levels.

Soil moisture is generally low to near normal, except in a small area of the Cypress Hills, where soil moisture is normal to high.

But it’s not as high as in past years when flooding has occurred.

A total of 31.27 millimetres of rain has fallen on Medicine Hat between 12 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday

Power restored

Power was restored to all customers after a “weather related” outage hit Medicine Hat on Tuesday morning, according to city officials.

Thank you to the community, and the residents who lost power, for your patience and for your words of encouragement for the staff out in the field working in less than ideal conditions. We expect this to be the final update.

— City of Medicine Hat (@medicinehatcity) May 7, 2024

The outage impacted about 1,200 customers in the Scholten Hill area, including parts of Crestwood, the South River Flats, the Southeast Hill, Norwood, Connaught and into Southridge.

At 6:05 a.m., the city reported Sholten Hill was closed to traffic to allow city crews space to repair some downed power lines.

Just less than two hours later, the city said all power was restored with the hill remaining closed while crews repaired the damage.

At 9:21 a.m., the city said 1,201 customers were once again without power as “additional challenges” were discovered.

In an update at 9:45 a.m., the city said it has identified and isolated the latest concern and estimated that power will be restored slowly over the next few hours as crews redirect electricity around the problem area.

The city said all power was restored to customers in what it expected to be a final update at 1:07 p.m.

Medicine Hat College said early Tuesday it had lost power, closing the Medicine Hat campus. The Brooks Campus remains open but with limited IT services due to the outage.

The college around 11:30 a.m. said its Medicine Hat campus would be closed for the rest of the day and that power remains down.

Following the restoration of power, the college will remain closed until it can ensure that there are no health and safety risks, it said in a statement.

The college said it would share another update at 4 p.m.

Area affected by power outage (City of Medicine Hat)

Residents who come across a downed power line the city of Medicine Hat are asked to remain at least 10 meters away, and always give utility crews space to do their work.

by Brian Konrad, Eli J. Ridder

Highway 1 lane scheduled to reopen at 1 a.m., rainfall warning continues

Single-lane closure to end

Power restored

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