Heavy, wet snow that coated Red Deer broke a few tree branches, including one snowy branch that caused a large power outage on Monday and into Tuesday.
The city's senior utilities superintendent Dean Walker said that a power outage from 10:42 p.m. until 1:25 a.m. impacted parts of Northlands Industrial Park, Edgar Industrial, Queens Industrial, along with Riverside Heavy Industrial, Pines and Normandeau neighbourhoods.
About 1,350 customers were affected by the outage.
He said a snow covered branch on a spruce tree behind Page Avenue broke from the weight of the snow and hit a power line.
A few smaller outages also impacted homes in the city when trees in residential yards hit power lines.
The City's Parks Department received approximately 20 calls regarding broken branches caused by the weight of the snow, but did not result in any major issues.
About five cm of snow fell on the city, according to Public Works.
Red Deer RCMP did not report any significant collisions on city streets due to the rain and snow.
But early Tuesday morning, some southbound drivers on Highway 2, between 67th and 32nd Streets, were delayed after a semi trailer slid sideways across the lane, but was able to straighten out.
Sylvan Lake RCMP also attended a serious motor vehicle collision Tuesday morning on Highway 20, south of Bentley.
Environment and Climate Change Canada did not have snow statistics available for Red Deer, but Nordegg saw 20 cm, Gull Lake had 15 cm, Rimbey had five and Sundre had six. Lacombe received a mixture of about 17 cm of snow and rain.
Weather alerts were issued for the Rocky Mountain House and Sundre areas, but there were none for the Red Deer area.
Meteorologist Justin Shelley said on average Red Deer gets about 18 cm of snow in April, which is more than the average amount of snow the city sees in February, and comparable to snowfall in December.
"While it's often a shock, especially after a longer period of above average, warmer temperatures, it's still a pretty common occurrence until we get into the middle of May in the central portion of Alberta," Shelley said about spring snow.
Shelley said the Red Deer area sees an average of 9.5 cm of snow in May, but in the short to medium-term, it's looking warmer and drier. Whatever snow did accumulate will melt away pretty quickly, with an upper ridge from the west pushing temperatures to the mid to high teens by the end of the week.
Highs of 16 C on Friday and 19 C on Saturday are in the forecast.
"We're done with snow at least for the short term, likely to the end of the month."
