Colony cleaning up dead geese

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This article was published 28/07/2010 (5779 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE storms that walloped southern Manitoba Monday night left members of the James Valley Hutterite Colony near Elie cleaning up what appeared to be hundreds of dead geese killed by hail stones.

Golf-ball-sized hail pummeled areas around Garson, Starbuck and La Salle during storms Monday evening.

At the James Valley colony, the shower of ice killed geese that had been raised as livestock. A member of the colony told the Free Press that workers were still picking up the dead geese Tuesday afternoon. The colony has somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 geese, the man said.

A tornado touched down briefly north of Oakbank at around 8:50 p.m. Monday, with reports of trees knocked down in the area.

Elaine B. Holestine, who lives on the northern outskirts of Winnipeg, said she saw a funnel cloud to the north Monday evening.

“It was just very brief,” she said of the cloud, which never touched down. “That’s something I’ve never seen.”

Winds were strong and she got some rain, but the weather blew over Holestine’s house before it got any worse than that, she said. Still, when she saw the cloud, she made sure to call her teenage son back from playing soccer in the park, just in case.

Holestine said she and her neighbours, many of whom are family, have a telephone system to let each other know about dangerous weather.

“We just kind of phone each other like tag.”

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Glenn Schneider said about 200 cottagers and residents around Caddy Lake and West Hawk Lake were left without power after high winds tore through Whiteshell Provincial Park.

He said the winds, possibly micro-bursts, knocked over trees that hit electrical lines at about 10 p.m.

“There are a lot of trees down out there,” he said. “Some poles are down on islands, so we’ll have to use a boat to get out there.”

Highway 307 at White Lake washed out temporarily, making it difficult for hydro crews to access the area.

Power at the Caddy Lake Resort was down for about 19 hours, finally being restored around 5 p.m. Tuesday, said owner Wayne Mooney.

He said the resort’s 100-foot floating dock was “whipping like a snake” from the intense winds.

“There are hundreds of trees down all over the place,” Mooney said. “It was fast. It was calm, like a light breeze, and within five minutes things were just going crazy.

“The wind was just fierce and swirling in all directions,” he said, adding resort guests heard a “freight train roaring” sound coming from the lake.

The air has been more electric of late than last year at this time, but Environment Canada said no new records are on the horizon.

Manitoba has experienced more than 154,000 cloud to ground lightning flashes so far this year, said meteorologist Dan Kulak.

More than 108,000 of those bolts occurred this month alone, more than double the number recorded in all of July last year. In fact, the province is nearing the total number of lightning flashes in all of 2009, said Kulak — around 159,000.

But that’s nothing compared to 2005, when nearly 394,000 lighting flashes were recorded, around 213,000 of them in July.

Of the 505 fires reported to date in northern Manitoba, 276 were sparked by lightning.

— With files from Sandy Klowak, Kevin Rollason and Matt Preprost

lindsey.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca