Tornado touches down near Elkhorn

A tornado touched down in southwestern Manitoba Sunday evening.

The tornado and heavy thunderstorms were reported near Elkhorn, a community in the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth, about 105 kilometres west of Brandon.

The heavy storms and winds were caused by a frontal passage, when two separate air masses move over the same location, said Stephen Berg, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“(It was) a pretty active system, that’s for sure,” Berg said Monday morning.

Another tornado hit near Maryfield, Sask., located southwest of Elkhorn. The severity rating of both tornadoes is still being determined pending further investigation by the Northern Tornadoes Project, a Canadian research initiative that studies tornado activity.

The weather agency issued a tornado warning in Wallace-Woodworth and some surrounding areas Sunday.

A number of southwest communities saw heavy rain Sunday: as of 6 a.m. Monday, there was a recorded 73.8 millimetres of rainfall in Kola, 37.8 millimetres in Duck Mountain, 55.8 millimetres in San Clara, 41.2 millimetres in St. Lazare, and 37.8 millimetres in Duck Mountain.

Environment Canada is monitoring strong winds that could reach the southwest corner of Manitoba Monday, including the communities of Melita and Virden, Berg said.

“There might be wind gusts that could exceed 80 kilometres per hour, we’ll have to keep watch for that,” he said.

“That might be an issue in terms of the fragile soils that are present with all that rain, so trees and power poles might be a bit more susceptible to being bent over from the wind.”

There have been 11 confirmed tornadoes in Manitoba this year. This is around average for the province, Berg said, but he noted it has been “quite an active” summer for heavy rain and thunderstorms.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca