‘It was just Mother Nature showing us she’s the boss’

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This article was published 28/07/2015 (3925 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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TILSTON, Man. — When Fred Raynor’s family sought shelter in his farmhouse’s basement in the hopes of weathering the monster storm outside, he told them he wasn’t going anywhere.

The father of six and grandfather of seven has lived on that farm near Tilston, 144 kilometres southwest of Brandon, for 51 years. He was going to sit at his kitchen table and look out the big front window and watch whatever was about to happen.

“I said I wasn’t going down, because if something was going to get me, I wanted to see it,” Fred said Tuesday. “I sat in that chair over there and watched it.”

“It” was the wedge tornado — meaning the funnel was as wide as it was tall — that touched down near Tilston on Monday night around 8:30 p.m. Already, it’s been informally dubbed “tornado of the year” for North America by pro tornado hunter Greg Johnson. The tornado’s path took it right through Raynor’s yard, tearing up dozens of trees and destroying almost all the service and storage buildings on his farm.

“I’m not real sure what time it was, roughly 8:30, that you could see it coming from the west. Really cloudy. Black, totally black. Cloud rolling in,” Raynor said Tuesday in his farmhouse kitchen. “There was an awful crack of thunder, just — psssh — shook everything.”

Raynor said he thought the worst had passed when a storm chaser — one of many who set out Monday night to see the action — showed up on his property, and told him to clear out fast.

“The guy says, get in your truck, get everybody in your truck, and go south. Get out of here, he said, because it’s still in the area,” Raynor recalled.

Raynor and his family headed a few klicks down the road and gathered with other family members at Raynor’s daughter’s house. Safe in the house, surrounded by his brood, Raynor said he started to relax.

“At one point, I didn’t know how to handle it,” he said. “Once I got there, got sitting down in the house, got a cup of coffee into me, I kind of settled down, and I found out everybody was all right.”

“Neighbours were all right, both sides, everybody. So I calmed down. But I was up in the air, I really was. I guess you could call me scared, the only way that I know,” he said. “I’d never been through anything in my life like that before, nothing, nothing, not a thing.”

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Warning: may contain strong or potentially offensive language

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Late Tuesday afternoon, Raynor’s house was buzzing — food brought over from neighbours, calls coming in from family friends to assist in the clean up, and the extensive Raynor clan, kids and grandkids, clearing out trees, hauling wood, helping out.

“We lost all these trees here, which means nothing, really. The trees will grow back,” he said. “Anne (his wife) had a chicken house along out there, with about 400 little chickens, little guys. It’s gone, and the chickens are gone, most of them.”

“Grandma’s house, it’s the one next to us. Nobody’s living in it. It’s still here, ours is still here. Barn’s still here. And we’re still here,” he said. “And thank God for that.”

To Raynor, the tornado was a cautionary experience.

“It was just Mother Nature showing us she’s the boss,” he said. “I think there’s no two ways about it.”

‘Thrown around like a rag doll’

A few kilometres away, Dakota Radcliffe, 15, was in a truck with his brother, trying to get a look at the tornado. They had been planning to follow it and skirt around its western edge, but it caught up with them and they were forced to drive into the roadside ditch for safety. Visibility was so bad and the wind so strong, Dakota was holding his phone camera up for his brother to look through to see the road better.

“We were on the road, we were driving and there was almost no visibility whatsoever. You could feel the truck kind of shaking a bit for a couple miles, and then, all of a sudden at one point, I’d say at least three of the wheels were off the ground while we were still on the highway,” he said.

Sheltering in the ditch alongside Highway 2, eight kilometres west of Reston, the brothers sat for nearly 10 minutes waiting out the storm.

“We were just praying,” Dakota said, adding “it was pretty emotional.” In the ditch, the driver side of the truck was being lifted off the ground, his brother added, “thrown around like a rag doll.”

“You could barely see the lines on the highway and just — lightning. Everywhere. And you could see the air, and the rain just twirling in front of us,” Dakota said. “A lot of wind, thunder and kind of a low, moaning sound. We think that was the tornado.”

Dad Robert Radcliffe was also out chasing the storm, but he wasn’t with his sons when they pulled over. He was on the phone with them as they sat there, and said he was “pretty tore up.”

“Basically, (the conversation) was just, saying ‘I love you’ and reassuring them that we were coming to find them. And you know, just to hang on, basically,” Robert said. “As much as anything it was to keep conversation so that, I think, they knew and I knew that we were still there and OK.”

In Virden, Taylor Nahachewsky, 16, and her family were sitting in the basement, listening to a handheld radio by candlelight to hear updates on the storm. Taylor has lived in the southwestern Manitoba town her whole life and said she has seen a lot of storms. None of them has come close to this one, she said.

“It was really, really scary. I’ve never felt anything like that before,” she said. She and her family sheltered in her house’s basement for two hours Monday night, following the storm’s progress on social media until the power went out, and their phones died. After that, they listened to a handheld radio by candlelight until they heard the tornado had moved on.

“The wind was whistling against the house, we heard hail hitting the house,” she said. “Even when the storm was far away, we went outside to watch, and all we could hear was a rumbling the entire time and it never stopped. And lightning was constant throughout the entire night.”

When she heard the storm was over, Taylor said she felt “very relieved, and happy, and safe.”

Dad Don Nahachewsky said he was surprised at how little damage has been reported.

“It’s a miracle, really,” he said. “It’s really amazing that nobody really got hurt, because I guess it came pretty close to town.

“It was a close call.”

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 Tammy Van Beselaere removes Christmas decorations from the destroyed shed on her fathers, Fred Raynor, property that was damaged by the tornado Monday night close to Tilston, Man. (Mike Deal / Winniperg Free Press)

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‘We were very lucky’

Natalie Hasell, Environment Canada’s warning preparedness meteorologist, said Tuesday the tornado that struck southwest Manitoba was “a large powerful storm.”

“We were lucky… most of the damage wasn’t to very large structures.”

Hasell said the national weather service was following the storm system and was able to issue a tornado warning at 8 p.m. Monday, about half an hour before the tornado was spotted south of Tilston and heading north.

“We had excellent lead time and we were very lucky,” she said from Virden.

Hasell said the tornado was last seen near Virden at about 10:55 p.m.

Hasell said tornadoes touch down for long lengths of time in the United States’ so-called Tornado Alley in the Midwest states, but they are less common on the Canadian Prairies.

“In general, most tornadic storms, when they produce a tornado, they are on the ground for a few minutes — 10 to 15 minutes… ones like this are relatively rare.

“This was probably one of the longest on the ground tornadoes we have had on the ground in Manitoba or on the Prairies.”

David Wills, an expert on tornadoes with Environment Canada, said if it is determined that the tornado was on the ground for three hours, “that would likely be among the longest tornado tracks in Canada… Perhaps the longest.”

Hasell said a team of investigators from Environment Canada has already started working in Virden to try to figure out where this tornado ranks on the Fujita tornado damage scale.

“We don’t measure the potential strength of the storm. We measure what got damaged.”

Hasell encouraged Manitobans who suffered tornado damage to let investigators know so they can assess it. She said people can contact Environment Canada by calling 1-800-239-0484 or storm@ec.gc.ca.

Meanwhile, Manitoba Hydro spokesman Anthonie Koop said Tuesday the Crown corporation was sending “all available crews” across the province to deal with the “extraordinary damage” caused by the extreme weather.

As of Tuesday night, 50 homes were still without power, although the largest affected areas got power back Tuesday morning. The damage was caused in part by the tornado itself, Koop said, helped along by intense lightning activity throughout the region.

One segment of line near Melita in the southwest corner of Manitoba, stretching more than two kilometres, was “taken down,” Koop said, causing power outages for 40 customers. Many of them have their power back now, but 16 customers won’t get power back until around 5 p.m. Wednesday, he said.

“(The line) was one the ground, it looks like the tornado hit along the entire section,” he said. “There’s only two poles left standing.”

“We’re sending all available staff to get the line up as quickly as possible, but it will take time obviously because of how extensive the damage is,” said Koop, adding, “when you see that length of line, that many poles down, that’s definitely an extraordinary amount of damage.”

Koop said the largest outages occurred Tuesday morning around 5 a.m., affecting 450 customers in the Brandon area and 700 customers in the Glenborough area. Those customers got power back shortly after 6:30 a.m., he said, serviced by an alternate line to the area.

There were also poles down along provincial Highways 2 and 5 at Glenborough, he said.

— With files from Kevin Rollason

aidan.geary@freepress.mb.ca