Fierce winds whipping through southern Manitoba on Wednesday night reached speeds as high as 133 km/h, leaving a trail of downed trees and knocking out power for thousands.
Winds in the 90 km/h range tore through Ron Leclair’s yard, knocking down a big tree on his fence and a nearby power line.
“I’ve never seen a storm like this. I’ve never seen wind that powerful coming through here,” Leclair said. “I felt like it was a tornado. It was so powerful.”
Brandon had the highest recorded wind speeds provincewide at 133 km/h, said Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Terri Lang. Winds reached 113 km/h in Souris, 106 km/h in Portage la Prairie and 91 km/h in Winnipeg, she said.
Lang said there were 2,916 lightning strikes within 50 kilometres of Winnipeg overnight.
The strikes and wind knocked out power for thousands across southern Manitoba.
There might have been “many more than 30,000 customers without power” at the height of the outages overnight, Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura told CBC Radio Up to Speed host Faith Fundal.
Health Sciences Centre was among the locations hit with an outage overnight.
About 10,000 customers had their power back on by mid-afternoon Thursday, leaving about 20,000 still in the dark, mostly within Winnipeg, Chura said.
“We’re making every effort to restore power as safely and as quickly as possible,” he said.
“The damage we’re seeing is severe — poles snapped, large trees down on lines. In one case even, the tree landed on somebody’s gas meter and resulted in a gas leak … in the Westwood area.”
Outages were “radiating outward” from the city, with hydro maps showing outages in Portage la Prairie, Treherne and St. Adolphe.
Many of the outages are in the southern parts of Winnipeg, including the Charleswood, Waverley Heights and St. Vital areas.
It’s possible some customers will remain without power overnight Thursday, Chura said.
“We’re seeing damage at least as bad, perhaps even worse, [as] we saw in that big storm in June, which at the time … we were saying this is the worst summer storm damage we’ve ever seen. And now this one has probably topped it.”
In addition to downed lines, “we have poles down, equipment damaged by fire — so right now crews are working on assessing all of the damage as best we can,” he said.
‘Abnormally busy’: arborist
Gale-force winds tore down seven trees on Jim and Mona Hardy’s property, including a 20-metre tall cottonwood.
“It’s the strongest wind I’ve ever felt,” said Jim, who lives in Prairie Grove, between the Trans-Canada Highway and Lorette, south of Winnipeg. “I was awoken when our house shook like an earthquake, power went out.”
Arborist Pierre Duguay was fielding calls from homeowners like them Thursday morning, with most of the calls coming from Winnipeg’s south end, including in Fort Richmond and St. Norbert, and from just south of the city in La Salle.
By midday, he’d had 25 calls to clean up properties, including one for a tree that had fallen on a home.
“This summer has been abnormally busy with storms,” he said.
Environment Canada’s Lang said high heat and humidity have contributed to storm strength this summer. Those conditions are also leading to something known as “corn sweat.”
“The crops are full-growth right now, giving off a tremendous amount of moisture. We call it evapotranspiration — farmers would call it corn sweat,” she said.
“That is adding to the atmosphere, and then you just need those things that happen in the upper atmosphere to come together and you’ve got all the ingredients for severe weather.”
That severe weather overnight Wednesday translated to nearly 700 calls to 311 for help cleaning up downed trees and woody debris.
A City of Winnipeg spokesperson said there were 41 calls about traffic signal malfunctions, 21 reports of debris strewn across streets, nine plugged catch basins and one sewage backup.
The city’s online form is another way Winnipeggers can request post-storm cleanup services.
In St. Norbert, Leclair will have some cleanup to do ahead of the long weekend.
“I feel very fortunate that it didn’t hit my house,” he said. “I’m sad to lose the tree, but you know, no one got hurt.”
Strong winds walloped southern Manitoba during a thunderstorm Wednesday night, downing trees and damaging homes. More than 30,000 customers were left without power at the height of power outages that night.
