Edmonton - Carol Quiring had to fish about three metres of eavestroughing out of her hot tub after winds gusting up to 100 kilometres per hour tore through parts of Alberta Friday night.

It was part of a storm system that was also being blamed for blasting out windows and flinging construction debris around in Winnipeg Saturday.

Ms. Quiring, who lives in a north Edmonton neighbourhood, looked out her back door Saturday morning and noticed that the cover on her hot tub had slid several centimetres.

When she looked more closely, she could see a three-metre long chunk of metal eavestroughing sticking out of the pool.

Thinking that the wind had blown her neighbours' eavestrough down, she knocked on a few doors looking for the owner.

"I went to both my next door neighbours...and they can't see anything missing off their house. So I don't know where they came from," she said.

Environment Canada issued wind warnings for several regions of the province Friday, saying a cold front was producing very strong winds as it tracked east.

Barb Lewis was visiting friends in a south Edmonton neighbourhood around 9:30 p.m. when her husband noticed a large tree tilting over.

"It was about a 40-foot fir tree and all of a sudden it just snapped and went flying and landed in ... the neighbour's back yard," she said.

No one was hurt and no property was damaged in that incident, Lewis added.

There were also reports of a strange weather-related phenomenon on a farm near Bonnyville, northeast of Edmonton.

A farmer woke to find hundreds of large, doughnut-shaped snowballs sitting in a field on his property - presumably rolled up by the strong wind gusts.

"I have to say that Mother Nature was our toughest customer last night," said Jennifer MacGowan, a spokeswoman for Calgary-based Fortis Inc., which supplies electricity to thousands of Alberta customers.

The wind storm knocked out power to approximately 10,000 households from Athabasca, north of Edmonton to communities in central Alberta, she said.

"The cause was mainly due to the wind storm and trees coming down on our lines. In some cases we actually had to rebuild poles that came down with the wind."

As of Saturday afternoon, power had been restored to most Fortis customers, though crews were still working to get the lights back on for some rural customers near Drayton Valley, southwest of Edmonton, she added.

Tim le Riche, a spokesman for Epcor, which supplies electricity to customers in Edmonton, said at the height of the storm, power was out to eight areas of the city.

Crews worked through the night and power was restored to the last of Epcor's customers around 7 a.m. Saturday, he said.

Winds gusting up to 90 kilometres an hour knocked out windows in an office building in downtown Winnipeg Saturday.

Police were forced to close a downtown street after construction material, including insulation, was blown out of a construction site at a Manitoba Hydro building.

The winds were so strong, construction material from the site was deposited on streets several blocks away.

Environment Canada issued a wind warning for several areas of Manitoba Saturday.

It said the cold front also brought up to 15 centimetres of snow in some areas.