Severe thunderstorms on Sunday swept through beleaguered western Manitoba — still recovering from storms earlier this month — bringing at least one tornado that a storm chaser called a “monster.”
“I’ve chased a few big tornadoes here in Canada, [and] it definitely was one of the stronger, top three strongest, Canadian tornadoes I’ve seen,” said Aaron Jayjack.
“I was terrified people were about to die from this thing. Thankfully, that did not happen.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed a tornado touched down southwest of Rossburn — about 275 kilometres to the west of Winnipeg — around 8 p.m. The weather agency is also working with the Northern Tornadoes Project to look into reports of another near Roblin around 8:55 p.m.
Jayjack was tracking supercells throughout the afternoon that struggled to turn into anything more until the evening, when one “went very, very, very fast from nothing to a violent tornado in … less than an hour or so.”
The first swirls of dust began about three metres away from him, just south of Birtle, southwest of Rossburn. Within 10 minutes, “it peaked into a pretty big monster tornado,” Jayjack said.
“I tracked it to the east. It was moving at a pretty good clip … towards Rossburn,” he said. “I watched it fortunately miss a couple of homes, but then unfortunately make a pretty direct impact on a farmhouse.”
At that point, he halted his chase and went to the house to check on anyone inside.
“It was pretty heavily damaged. [It] still had some of its walls, but its eastern wall had come down and roof was missing. The rest of the farm was hit pretty hard as well,” Jayjack said.
“Thankfully the people in that home were OK. We were able to get to the house and crawl through debris and check on them.”
They had already called 911 and were waiting for emergency crews to arrive.
Jayjack went to the next house, about 100 metres down the road, driving through downed branches and around trees.
“There was no one there, fortunately, but it wasn’t damaged as bad,” he said.
Rossburn Fire Department Chief Kelly Slon said an older couple was in the brick farmhouse.
“She was in shock quite a bit, but other than that, just lots of damage around the house and the yard and barn and all that,” he said, adding he’s been on the fire department for 40 years and has never seen a bigger tornado.
A barn on the property was also destroyed, a large steel shipping container was tossed into the middle of a field, trees were ripped by their roots from the ground, and cars were flipped over in the yard.
“It was a century home, so it was a piece of history gone as well,” said Shirley Kalyniuk, mayor of the Rossburn Municipality. “You can never rebuild a century home.”
On the neighbouring property, a shop building was destroyed and part of the home’s roof was peeled off.
Not a ‘run-of-the-mill tornado’
Kalyniuk said she will check with her council on Monday “to see if there’s anything we, as a municipality, can do for these folks.”
Adam Grabowski, deputy mayor of the Rossburn Municipality, said he spoke with the municipality’s chief administrative officer and will reach out to the Emergency Measures Organization about declaring a local state of emergency.
“I’ve never seen the clouds move the way that they did,” said Grabowski. “They came from the east going to the west, then they came from the south going to the north, and then they came back at us.”
Jayjack estimates the tornado was on the ground for at least 20 minutes and left a trail of damage.
“From my experience, it looks like it’s probably an EF3 [on the enhanced Fujita scale],” he said. “It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill tornado.”
The Northern Tornadoes Project, a Western University-based lab in Ontario, is sending a team out on Monday to do an investigation and assign a damage rating, said Environment Canada meteorologist Shannon Moodie. More information will also be gathered about the possible tornado near Roblin.
Once a preliminary assessment has been completed, Environment Canada will be able to provide more information.
Sunday’s storm also brought quarter-sized hail to the Shell Valley area and wind gusts up to 100 km/h near Somerset, Moodie said.
More active weather is forecast for Monday.
“All the overnight stuff is quieting down, but it’ll reinvigorate this afternoon and through the evening,” she said Monday morning.
“It’s a very, very unsettled pattern right now.”
Storms and flooding this month in western and southern Manitoba have damaged hundreds of homes and forced some to evacuate.
People were stranded on rooftops after flash flooding in the municipality of Swan Valley exactly three weeks ago, while a local state of emergency was declared in the neighbouring municipality of Minitonas-Bowsman due to flooding.
Two days later, storms in Winnipeg and the surrounding region produced two tornadoes and left a trail of destruction that included floods, downed power lines and trees, and thousands of damaged vehicles from hailstones that ranged in size from nickels to baseballs.
