Tracy Buck says she’s lucky after a storm destroyed her carport roof, damaging her car, and broke a layer of glass on the skylights over her indoor pool.
“It got so loud that I really felt the whole house was going to come off the foundation,” she said Monday, the day after a storm battered southwestern Manitoba.
“It was very scary. I’ve never been in a storm like that in my life. It was the strongest winds and the loudest noise I’ve ever heard.”
Buck, 67, took shelter in her basement in Killarney, Man., during a storm that damaged homes, took down trees and shut out the lights for thousands of people on Sunday night.
Hail as big as tennis balls and wind gusts around 80 km/h were reported to Environment Canada, as storm-weary western Manitoba was hit by another round of extreme weather.
“We’ve had an unusual amount of storms this year,” Buck said. “All the towns around here are in pretty bad condition.”
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 Sunday evening, Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said.
The storm also 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.
At 3:30 p.m., the public utility said on social media it expected most outages to be restored Monday night, although some customers may remain without power overnight.
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.
There were reports of a funnel cloud from Napinka, about 85 kilometres southwest of Brandon, but it’s possible plow winds â straight-line downburst winds â 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.
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.”
Buck said the damage in Killarney includes homes that had trees fall on them and flooded basements.
“We were actually very lucky, you know, definitely counting our blessings that nothing worse happened,” she said. “There’s a lot worse in town.”
When the storm subsided and she ventured outside, Buck saw a hailstone that was close to baseball-sized, she said.
In addition to the damaged skylights and carport, she had trees down and fence damage, she said.
There are leaves everywhere because the storm stripped them off the trees, she said.
“It’s a mess.⦠The trees in this town are just totalled,” she said. “It’s going to take a long time to clean it up.”
A spokesperson for Manitoba Public Insurance said as of noon, more than 500 storm-related claims had been made, and it’s believed the majority are related to Sunday’s storm.
More claims are expected, the spokesperson said in an email.
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, meteorologist 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.
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.”
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Buck said her husband is already working on replacing their clear plastic carport roof with something sturdier, and they plan to do something to protect the windows around and above their indoor pool.
She’s lived in Killarney for six years, but people who’ve lived there their whole lives say they’ve never seen a storm like this before, either, she said.
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“We’ve noticed since we’ve been here that the storms have really been increasing quite a bit in intensity,” she said.
“We’re just going to have to deal with it.”
