Overnight storm batters southwestern Manitoba again

Hail, strong winds cause damage in what Environment Canada meteorologist calls 'active summer'

Hail as big as tennis balls and wind gusts around 80 km/h were reported to Environment Canada, as storm-weary western Manitoba was battered by another round of extreme weather on Sunday.

"You combine 79 km/h winds with golf ball-sized hail … you're going to get a lot of damage from that," Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said.

Southwestern Manitoba, south of Brandon down to the U.S. border and from the Saskatchewan border as far east as Killarney, reported strong winds and hail, Lang said.

The storm affected power for more than 6,000 Manitoba Hydro customers, the Crown corporation said on social media, with Highway 2 closed overnight from Highway 10 to Highway 5 due to downed power lines.

As of 11 a.m. Monday, close to 3,000 people were without power in storm-affected areas, a spokesperson for Manitoba Hydro said in an email, with the Brandon, Wawanesa and Killarney areas hit particularly hard.

Poles are damaged and power lines are down, the Crown corporation said, asking customers to continue to report outages. Restoration times will vary based on the complexity of repairs.

Environment Canada started getting reports of extreme weather mid-afternoon, and they continued into the evening, Lang said.

There were reports of a funnel cloud from Napinka, about 85 kilometres southwest of Brandon, but it's possible plow winds — stright-line downburst winds — may have caused some of the damage in the area, Lang said. Environment Canada will investigate.

"Most of the damaging winds that we see on the Prairies from thunderstorms are actually from straight-line winds or plow winds," she said.

"We can get straight-line winds [with the] strength of EF-2 tornadoes," said Lang, referring to the five-point enhanced Fujita scale, used to categorize tornado severity.

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Hail accompanied by strong winds can also cause an enormous amount of damage, she said. Big hailstones coming straight down shred leaves off trees and damage roofs.

"But if they're blowing almost sideways, then they're blowing into windows and sidings and cars and the whole bit."

The reports Environment Canada received included the following:

The weather is now clearing and should be good until Thursday, when there's a chance of severe weather again, Lang said.

"We are in [the] heart of severe weather season, and it has been an active summer, and I think it will continue to be an active summer," she said.

"It's just the way the weather pattern is this year, with all the moisture and just the way the upper weather pattern is."

She urged people to be prepared and pay attention to warnings, even if they are coming frequently.

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Have a plan when severe weather approaches and don't wait to seek safety at the last minute, she said.

"It's a very long winter on the Prairies, so we wait forever to get, you know, some nice sunny weather, and we want to enjoy the summer. You just have to be doing it safely."

Lara Schroeder is an online copy editor for CBC Manitoba who also writes and dabbles in radio. She started her career as a newspaper reporter, but writing habits nurtured by her English teacher dad and grammatically meticulous mom steered her toward editing. Her many jobs have included editing at the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Toronto Sun and the Winnipeg Free Press.

With files from Marjorie Dowhos