A vicious storm pounded Winnipeg Monday night, leaving a swath of destruction in the city’s southwest that included the partial collapse of a house.
It ripped shingles and plywood off roofs, tore down fences, threw barbecues across yards, uprooted and snapped trees, and mangled a metal shelter for shopping carts in a grocery store parking lot.
“I’m absolutely astounded. I couldn’t believe [it] when I started looking around,” said Cyndi Porcher, who lives on Tolcross Gate in Winnipeg’s Whyte Ridge neighbourhood, where much of the damage occurred.
“[It looks like] something you’d see in the news … down south,” she said, referring to the frequency of tornadoes in the U.S.
“Just not what you expect to see in your own neighbourhood. I just hope nobody was hurt.”
Porcher’s home was unscathed, as was that of Lila Hillman, who also lives on the street. Hillman’s yard, though, is littered with shingles blown off neighbouring houses.
She said the worst of the storm hit just before 10 p.m.
“You could just see the wind with debris everywhere. It was absolutely crazy. I’m just in shock,” Hillman said.
The homeowners of the house that partially collapsed are out of the city, and Hillman spoke with them on the phone Tuesday morning to break the news.
“Not good, no,” she said, breaking into tears. “They’re going to try and come back in the next couple of days.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada is still trying to determine what caused the damage.
“We saw some fairly significant wind gusts, [and] we were trying to get an idea of what they were,” said Brian Proctor, a meteorologist with the agency.
Gauges at the airport recorded a relatively minor peak gust of 57 km/h. But based on radar, it’s likely some neighbourhoods saw wind gusts well in excess of 90 km/h, he said.
With lines of thunderstorms, “the area of wind gusts … that are strongest often don’t surface uniformly across an area,” said Proctor.
“They surface in sort of burst areas, and that’s what we think happened last night, especially in southern Winnipeg. It was really a straight-line wind event.”
Straight-line winds, also known as burst winds or plow winds, are non-rotating, powerful winds generated by thunderstorms. They can be just as strong as tornadoes but are defined by a downburst rather than a rotating column like a tornado, according to the weather agency’s website.
The line of thunderstorms extended from the Interlake lake through Winnipeg and down to the U.S. border, “with the circulation from those storms supporting each other and moving fairly rapidly,” Proctor said.
“We did see a hint of rotation on radar over Winnipeg last night, but we do not believe that it was tornadic. The rotation we’re seeing was probably fairly high up in the atmosphere, not right near the surface.
“But we’ll get a better feel for that as we get a chance to take a look … in detail at some of that weather radar data later on.”
Southern Manitoba has been rife with storms in recent days. A confirmed tornado wreaked havoc south of Rossburn on Sunday, tearing apart sections of a century-old brick farmhouse.
On Monday, intense rain hit Brandon, in southwestern Manitoba, and areas to the north and south, including Boissevain, causing overland flooding.
Brandon received up to 67 millimetres of rain, Boissevain had 152 millimetres and Deloraine, just west of there, had 130, Environment Canada data said.
At least 100 millimetres was recorded in Shilo, Minto, Neepawa, Plumas and Rivers. Winnipeg, in comparison, only recorded 27 millimetres.
And Mother Nature’s wrath isn’t done with southern Manitoba yet. A further 15-50 millimetres of rain is expected to Tuesday fall over portions of western Manitoba, according to Environment Canada, which issued an orange-level rainfall warning Tuesday morning.
The heaviest amounts are likely through the Roblin to Dauphin area.
The “severe-weather season … really stretches through June into July, and sort of tapers off early in August,” Proctor said, so “we’ve still got another month of severe weather season to go at least.”
However, there should be windows of respite.
“I think we’re probably looking at … a more stable, drier pattern as we move to the upcoming weekend,” Proctor said.
The City of Winnipeg is still assessing the storm’s impacts, but initial reports suggest tree damage is the main issue, with city forestry crews “already busy this morning,” Tamara Forlanski wrote.
As of 7 a.m. Tuesday, the city had received 111 reports of downed or damaged trees and a couple dozen reports for plugged catch basins. There were also a handful of service requests for malfunctioning traffic signals, sewer backup and missing manhole covers, she wrote.
