After Sunday's storm in Minitonas dropped two months of rain in two hours, Mother Nature has one-upped herself. Stonewall saw more than 255mm of rain over a 3 hour span, that's 3 and half months worth of rain.
Brian Proctor, Environment Canada Meteorologist, went over some of the major causes of this storm, and why it had that much rain.
"So we had very significant flow up into Manitoba from the south, a warm moist air mass with a lot of shear in the atmosphere, which really supported very very significant thunderstorm development across much of south and central Manitoba, stretching up into the Interlake...the Stonewall area saw torrential rainfall, they received more than 255mm [of rain] by 3:00 AM," said Proctor.
Though it definitely wasn't limited to Stonewall: the effects of yesterday's severe storm system were felt all across the Parkland. Wind, rain, and in some towns, hail, were a big worry. Environment Canada also received several tornado reports from across the province, but are waiting on surveyors to assess the damage before they can confirm.
"Lots of reports of wind, lots of reports of hail associated with that, and possible reports of some tornado activity as well...[surveyors] are in the area, they've been doing some surveys in Saskatchewan, and they're expected to get into Southern Manitoba today I would think, and maybe we'll have some better reports, we'll be able to confirm some reports, by tomorrow or Friday hopefully at the latest.
One concern that echoes Sunday's storm in Minitonas is the possible runoff leading to flooding of nearby areas after the fact. Almost a day after that storm had cleared, a large portion of the runoff made its way to Swan River, prompting a local state of emergency to be declared.
"I don't think there's any infrastructure that's possibly built to take those kind of [rainfall] rates and deal with them at this point in time...be prepared to evacuate if you have to, plan your routes out, take the medication you require, get your animals out if you can," said Proctor.
Click here to visit the Government of Canada's website for information on how to make an emergency preparedness kit.
