SASKATOON -- Lorraine McSween thought someone had thrown a rock through her triple-paned bedroom window. It turns out it was her new fence, which had been blown three metres into the air by a powerful storm that wreaked havoc on northwestern Saskatchewan early Sunday.

"I got up and ran into the living room and told my husband that someone broke our window," McSween said Sunday, still in awe from what happened. "But two eight-foot panels from our fence, which were cemented in, broke off like twigs, and one came flying into our bedroom window."

McSween, 49, woke up around 1:30 a.m Sunday to shattered glass all over her husband's side of the bed, a small hole in the stucco on the side of their home, her steel dog run bent and twisted and several sections of the fence uprooted and blown across their yard.

McSween's home and several other homes in Warman were the victims of a powerful thunderstorm that ripped through the province after just midnight Saturday, leaving behind a trail of damage from just outside Saskatoon all the way to the Spiritwood area, 175 kilometres northwest of the city.

Environment Canada said a powerful downdraft -- a sudden descent of cool air to the ground -- created winds of up to 110 km/h, ripped roofs off of homes, sent golf carts through the air and uprooted and bent trees in some parts of the province. They had several reports of high plow winds and funnel clouds.

"A tornado is a sexier event, but straight-line winds like this can cause quite a bit of damage," said David Wray, a meteorologist with Environment Canada. "It's almost not important if it's a tornado or a straight line wind event like this -- either one can cause lots of damage."

In the Spiritwood area, there were heavy rains, powerful winds, strong lightning and power outages of up to 12 hours reported.