Call them the fall guys. A severe thunderstorm on Saturday battered several Edmonton neighbourhoods, with heavy rain triggering flooding, high winds toppling trees and, as a result, downing power lines. Two days later, fallen branches and uprooted trees still dot the landscape, including in the north-central Alberta Avenue neighbourhood, where residents recounted Saturday night’s scene amid the howling wind and driving rain. “We heard lightning, and then all of a sudden, a big crack,” Wendy Groulx told CTV News Edmonton. “I was sitting on the couch, and all of a sudden I saw something huge fall down.” What she saw was a large tree branch that had fallen onto 91 Street in front of her house, blocking traffic leaving a concert at nearby Commonwealth Stadium that night. “It was pouring rain, lightning and hail,” Groulx said. “They had to get out of their cars. It took five men to lift the branch off the road to get through the street.” The City of Edmonton said Monday in a media release that urban forestry crews have answered 341 “storm-related issues,” including fallen trees and branches, since Saturday night. Since July 1, crews have dealt with 2,256 such calls. Neighbour Darrell Lastiwka said their neighbourhood “looks a little like a war zone around here” in the storm’s aftermath. “We’ve got a lot of older trees in the neighbourhood,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s a really good thing, but sometimes, if you get a big wind like we had on Saturday night, it can be a little bit challenging.” Groulx said she feared her neighbourhood faced disaster amid Saturday’s howling wind and heavy rain that flooded the street and came up over the sidewalk. “It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had,” she said. “I’ve never seen the sky the colour it was. It looked like a tornado because my tree at the side (of the house) was splitting in half.” A record amount of rain has fallen on Edmonton since the start of June, with Environment Canada data measuring 511 millimetres of it, the highest volume since 1953, the city said. It said a typical summer month sees an average rainfall of 70-80 millimetres and that Edmonton averages 423 millimetres of it annually. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Noah Rishaug
