‘It was surreal to me’: wind peels roof off mobile home near Russell

Bracing himself against the force of a windstorm that ripped through Manitoba Thursday, Darren Charron couldn’t believe his eyes as the roof of his mobile home was sheared off and scattered into the fields around his rural property.

“Literally, I watch the roof peel right up and then kind of get hung up. Then everything went straight up in the air and just flew all over the place,” he said Friday.

“It was surreal to me.”

Charron’s property, southeast of Russell, was one of several casualties of the substantial storm, which began earlier this week and continued to batter parts of Manitoba overnight Thursday and into Friday.

High winds generated massive plumes of dust, downed trees and damaged property across southern parts of the province, leading to power outages that persisted Friday morning.

Charron said he arrived to his mobile home around 2 p.m. Thursday, just in time to witness its destruction. He spent hours trying to brace the structure’s walls and — bizarrely — sweeping away the rain that poured in.

“I was very tired, very stressed, trying to process everything. I know I had a mental break yesterday when I was trying to scoop up the water and put it into the garbage can,” Charron said.

Exhausted, he fell asleep inside the mobile home, only to be awakened early in the morning as the high winds persisted.

“I woke up and I had a major panic attack and my heart was racing. It felt like the whole thing was going to rip apart — like you’re on a freight train. The whole thing was just shaking back and forth,” Charron said.

“The walls were buckling.”

Charron bought the property in the spring of 2024 and has spent the past two years renovating the mobile home. While he has insurance for the land, he could not secure coverage for the home because it had been vacant for an extended period of time.

That means he is on the hook for the cost of repairs. The reality of his situation was only just settling in Friday, as he began to pick up the pieces.

“It’s going to be a huge expense,” Charron said, adding he has started an online fundraiser to help with the cost.

Manitoba Hydro reported widespread outages in the Parkland and Westman regions. Crews tried to restore power Thursday, but extremely low visibility and dangerous wind speeds prevented work throughout the night, the utility said.

When the sun rose Friday morning, the utility was dealing with 260 individual outages in the region, impacting an estimated 6,000 customers, spokesperson Peter Chura said.

“We’re seeing damage including lines down, trees on lines, pole fires, broken poles, damage to lines even from flying debris — like roofing material,” he said.

Restoration timelines are difficult to predict because each outage requires an assessment of infrastructure damage and crew safety requirements, Chura said.

Hydro workers managed to restore power to thousands of customers throughout the day, but others remained without service.

Additional reports of wind damage and power outages were received throughout Friday, Hydro said in a late-afternoon statement.

“Manitoba Hydro crews are making every effort to safely restore power as quickly as possible, but some customers may be without power overnight,” the statement said.

A significant low-pressure system that began in central Alberta drove the storm east across the Prairies, Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor said.

“We’ve seen really significant wind speeds associated with that system, more than anything else,” Proctor said.

“We’ve experienced the worst of the winds already, so, while we are seeing significant winds over southern Manitoba (Friday), it won’t be as impactful as the winds we experienced on Thursday.”

The Westman region had the highest wind speeds Thursday — peaking at 119 km/h near Deloraine, 113 km/h in Minto and 106 km/h in Brandon. Many other weather stations recorded speeds that exceeded 90 km/h, Proctor said.

The winds were so strong in Brandon that they toppled the steel frame of the Hi-Way Esso station sign on the Trans-Canada Highway, near 18th Street.

David McLean, the station manager, said the sign came down in a heap of twisted metal at about 8 p.m. Thursday.

“It was good to hear that it hadn’t hit anything. (I was thinking) ‘I guess that’s something I’ll have to deal with tomorrow,’” he said.

It appears the sign will be salvageable. McLean said it won’t be possible to complete a full assessment of the damage until next week.

In Winnipeg, wind speeds reached 87 km/h during the the storm, Proctor said.

High winds caused damage in Winnipeg, including on Stiles Street in Wolseley, where a downed tree fell on the back end of a black SUV, crushing the rear passenger seats.

The City of Winnipeg received about 45 service requests for tree damage related to the high winds, but most were for debris pickup.

“The majority are fallen branches, and only four requests are for fallen trees,” spokesperson Kalen Qually said.

Proctor expected wind speeds to taper off throughout the day Friday, gusting up to 80 km/h before dropping off across the province, beginning in the west.

At its peak, the wind created dust-storm conditions significant enough to be captured on weather radar from space, Proctor said.

Low visibility and damage to power lines and crops are typically the greatest concerns with such a weather system, he said.

Northern Manitoba had significant amounts of precipitation that produced snowfall from five to 10 centimetres in some communities.

A second weather system, expected to reach Winnipeg Sunday afternoon, will bring cooler temperatures and precipitation throughout the long weekend and into Tuesday, when there is a chance of mixed rain and snow.

Cool, damp conditions are not unusual for the May long weekend, Proctor noted.

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca