The early morning storm on July 30 sounded quite bad, but most of the damage in Slave Lake was confined to overturned poplar trees. It could have been much worse, but in most cases, the trees missed buildings and vehicles.
The bear trails along Sawridge Creek were mostly covered with leaves and twigs; in a few places some medium-sized trees lay over the path. In one case a huge tree toppled behind the Community Christian Centre, but it fell away from the trail rather than over it.
Karl Hill from the Town of Slave Lake said that his crew worked all morning to remove the debris, which temporarily blocked some roadways as well as the trails. Hill said during the night the Slave Lake fire department and the RCMP cleared any potentially hazardous trees around town. Public works and parks chopped up the downed trees the next morning, some being the elms along Main St.
Meanwhile, at 1108 12 Ave. S.E, where the wind had toppled a fair sized aspen tree taking another one with it, Lorna Beaver was just glad it hadn’t fallen the other way onto her trailer. Both trees lay across the broken fence along the neighbour’s driveway, crushing a few shrubs that Beaver’s mother had planted.
“At least it will make good firewood,” joked Beaver. She later told The Leader that she had slept through the entire storm, including when the tree was falling on her fence.
The Environment Canada weather station in Slave Lake recorded wind gusts of 74 to 78 km/h during the early a.m. of July 30. Jason Pankratow, the duty officer at the district forest protection office said that no fires were started because of the storm and all monitoring stations received plenty of rain.
Bill Heighington, the regional manager for Atco Electric, reported 35 residential power outages in the Smith area and only six outages in Slave Lake as a result of the storm. Tolko and the oilfields in south Mitsue experienced outages as well, he said. Atco crews responded and had most of the power loss restored by noon on July 30. The company continued to receive calls as oilfield customers made their rounds and residential customers returned to their homes.
The trampolines in Gloryland also took a beating during the storm. Several were found the next morning in neighbours’ yards or haphazardly hiding in the trees. Trees blew over in the subdivision as well, but there were no reports of damage to houses.
In the surrounding municipal district, there were trees down over roads in several locations. Director of Field Operations George Snider says M.D. facilities in Smith and Canyon Creek had to go on back-up power for a time as well.

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