Wednesday downpour dumps month’s worth of rain on some parts of city

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This article was published 31/05/2018 (3023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What a difference a day can make to turn a desert into a lake.

After suffering well-below-normal precipitation for most of May, parts of Winnipeg were deluged with so much rain in a few short hours Wednesday that those areas are now at, or above, the average — 56.7 millimetres — normally recorded for the entire month.

The deluge is responsible for closing the doors at Wolseley’s iconic Tall Grass Prairie Bakery.

Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist Natalie Hasell said the city typically receives an average of 56.7 mm of precipitation in May, and Wednesday’s rain nearly matched that in one fell swoop in certain areas.

The Weatherlogics meteorological firm reported 74.2 mm in North River Heights.

“It all depends where in the city you were,” said Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist Natalie Hasell. “It went all the way down to almost nothing in the south of the city.”

Hasell said the far west end of the city just inside the Perimeter Highway was also extremely wet after receiving about 51 mm of rain.

The storm came during one of the driest springs in the city’s history. Rainfall on May 13 brought 32 days of drought to an end, but meteorologists at the time described it as more like a mist than a rainfall. Another 1-2 mm fell last Friday.

Tabitha Langel, one of the four owners of Tall Grass Prairie Bakery on Westminster Avenue, said when the rain began pouring outside Wednesday it wasn’t long before it began pouring inside their business.

“My husband and I first knew about it when an employee phoned and said, ‘please come,'” Langel said. “We walk in and it was like a movie. It was like Noah’s Ark.”

Langel said there was water on the first and second floors.

“Thankfully, it was not sewer backup… it was clean rain water,” she said.

Langel said repairs will be done quickly and they hope to reopen in about two weeks.

“We will sweetly rise to the occasion,” she said.

David Driedger, the city’s manager of corporate communications, said that in the wake of the storm the city received reports of one basement flooding, plugged catch basins on 20 back lanes and 38 streets, 21 incidents of sewer backup with clean water and 13 incidents of sewer backup with raw sewage.

Many motorists’ drive home from work were stymied at Jubilee underpass on Pembina Highway, which was impassible for a time. Driedger said that can happen during periods of heavy rainfall when the underpass drainage systems are temporarily overwhelmed.

The city’s combined sewer system became overwhelmed and raw sewage had to be discharged into the river instead of being directed through a treatment plant.

Driedger said the only traffic signal to malfunction during the storm was at Ness Avenue and Madison Street.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca