More storms developing over southeastern Saskatchewan and moving into Manitoba
Parts of southwestern Manitoba received a thorough soaking on Saturday after a line of thunderstorms crawled across the region in the early hours, leaving behind flooded streets and downed power lines.
“The most notable feature about it was that they were very, very slow moving for several hours,” said Brad Vrolijk, a forecaster with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“So while the thunderstorms weren’t too bad, in isolation, the fact that they just kind of sat in the same area for a very long time resulted in some pretty significant rainfall accumulations along a narrow line.”
That line stretched from Melita northeastward through Brandon and toward Lake Manitoba, leaving anywhere from 45-75 millimetres of rain, Vrolijk said.
Stations in Carberry and Shilo reported 46 mm but radar images suggest much heavier rain along less-populated areas where there are no stations to measure the amounts.
“There were little pockets kind of around those areas that the radar was showing up to 75 mm,” Vrolijk said.
Manitoba Hydro tweeted on Saturday that the storms have also damaged lines, poles and equipment, which is “wreaking some havoc.”
Crews are working on repairs and expect them to be completed soon, the tweet, posted around 10 a.m., said.
According to Hydro’s website, which lists current outages, there are about 400 customers without power.
The thunderstorms started weakening and moving off to the north just after 9 a.m. The Interlake region can expect to see some rain but the pattern has changed a bit, Vrolijk said.
“It’s now a very broad area of kind of rain with a few embedded thunderstorms that’s moving into [there],” he said
And by no means is southwestern Manitoba in the clear yet. More rain could be on the way.
“We’re actually in the middle of quite an active pattern,” Vrolijk said. “We have a second area of thunderstorms that’s developing over southeastern Saskatchewan this morning and that will lift into the Parkland Region — Dauphin, Minnedosa, and maybe even up into Ste. Rose for the afternoon.”
It will be another long line of relatively slow-moving storms so heavy amounts of rain could be seen again, he said, adding there could also be small to quarter-sized hail.
“That’s going to continue right through the overnight period, slowly moving eastward, and then it will weaken [Sunday] morning,” Vrolijk said. “And then another area of thunderstorms is forecast to develop [Sunday] and move eastward and strengthen tomorrow night as it moves into the Red River Valley.
“So it’s going to be a pretty active 48 hours coming up for the southwestern and south central parts of the province.”
That said, it’s extremely difficult to say with any certainty that rain will hit a particular area.
“It’s not very broad areas rain —it’s relatively isolated and forms along these bands. Even if there’s going to be three days of activity it could end up dodging around any one location,” Vrolijk said.
“So you’re going to see in the forecast lots of like 60 or 70 per cent chance of showers and thunderstorms but you might see nothing at all. Or you might see three inches of rain.”
