Severe winds and blowing dust damaged homes, signs and power infrastructure across southern Manitoba, with Hydro crews responding to dozens of outages.
Severe winds that blasted southern Manitoba on Thursday left residents cleaning up debris, drivers facing poor visibility in blowing dust and Manitoba Hydro crews working through dozens of power outages.
Environment and Climate Change Canada said some areas recorded gusts above 100 km/h, including 119 km/h at Deloraine and 106 km/h at Brandon. The agency’s wind warning for Winnipeg had ended by Friday morning, but warnings remained in place for parts of southwestern Manitoba, where winds were expected to ease late Friday afternoon.
The storm caused scattered damage across the region. Near Russell, Darren Charron said the roof of his 1970s mobile home was torn away as the wind hit. “I saw the roof just pick up and peel right off,” he told CBC, describing debris thrown into nearby fields.
Charron said he tried to brace the walls as they bowed, then dealt with rain coming into the damaged home. By Friday morning, he said the extent of the damage was clear: “It’s like a bomb went off. There’s stuff everywhere.”
Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura said Friday morning that about 260 individual outages were affecting roughly 6,000 customers across the province. Minto School, south of Brandon, was closed Friday because of a power outage.
Chura said crews were using all available resources but warned restoration would take time because of the number of outages. He said fallen trees and branches were behind many of the problems, though some poles were also brought down and crews had reports of wires sparking at masts where equipment had been affected by wind.
“Once you get into the 90 km/h winds, there’s very little above-ground hydro infrastructure that’s going to be immune to that,” Chura said.
In Brandon, the steel frame for a Hi-Way Esso station sign on the Trans-Canada Highway at 18th Street was knocked down. Manager David McLean said the sign frame toppled into a bush and did not hurt anyone, but the sign may have to be scrapped.
Environment Canada said damage to roofs, fences, branches and soft shelters remained possible in areas still under warning. The agency advised people to secure loose objects and cautioned that high-sided vehicles could be pushed around by the wind.
While southern Manitoba dealt with wind, dust and outages, parts of the north were under winter weather alerts Friday, including a freezing rain warning for the Split Lake and York Landing region and a winter storm warning farther north.
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