Manitobans brace for impact as storm season rages on

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This article was published 30/05/2022 (1392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Municipality of Killarney-Turtle Mountain residents were busy Monday, prepping for the severe weather set to impact much of southern Manitoba the next two days. It was a familiar scene.

“Lots of preparation, in the sense of neighbours helping neighbours tie things down, making sure that they have things put away into garages or in secure spots,” Mayor Merv Tweed told the Free Press on Monday afternoon.

“We seem to be constantly in a state of emergency. We’ve had warnings and everything in the past 10 days, so it’s not new to us.”

The southwestern community wasn’t alone. Another Colorado low weather system came into Manitoba across the international border Monday, bringing heavy rain and the risk of thunderstorms — with 30 to 50 millimetres of rain expected for Winnipeg and up to 75 mm across southeastern Manitoba by end of day Tuesday.

An overland flood warning issued Sunday was updated Monday afternoon to include all areas east of Provincial Trunk Highway 5 from the U.S. border to PTH 1 at Carberry and south of Lake Manitoba, along with the southeast corner of Manitoba. New areas to the warning list include Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie and Selkirk.

As of early Monday — before rain again began to fall — Winnipeg had already logged more precipitation since March 1 than it had in the same time period in the past 150 years. This year has marked the second-wettest spring in recorded history.

Other records have included March 1-May 31, meaning there’s a possibility Winnipeg’s level of precipitation (246.9 mm) may beat the all-time record of 325.4 mm set in 1896.

A tornado warning issued Sunday by Environment and Climate Change Canada for regions along the Canada-U.S. border was downgraded to a severe thunderstorm watch that night. However, the possibility of the weather posing a serious threat was still possible.

“If you have a mature severe thunderstorm, you can get all four of these things happening at the same time: large hail, heavy rain, and straight-line winds and tornadoes. And of course, lightning, lots and lots of lightning,” Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist Natalie Hasell said Monday.

A severe wind effects alert has been put in place by the province for Tuesday in the southern basin of Lake Winnipeg, south basin and southern shorelines of Lake Manitoba, and southern shores of Lake Winnipegosis and Dauphin Lake.

Winds could reach 100 km/h and cause “powerful wave action,” the province said, combined with rising water to impact properties in these areas.

Lake Winnipeg, which is currently at 715.5 feet, could beat its all-time record of 720.33 feet, which occurred during heavy flooding in 2010.

“We want to make sure that the people who live along Lake Winnipeg are prepared,” Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Doyle Piwniuk said.

“We always want to be prepared for the worst but hoping for the best.”

Around 50 shoreline communities are expected to be impacted by wind and heavy rain.

While the total amount of equipment deployed will depend on requests from these communities, the province said there were 2,000 Tiger Dams (flood mitigation tubes), 1.5 million sandbags and 8,000 super sandbags on standby. The province is working to beef up inventory back up to pre-flooding numbers of two million small sandbags and 10,000 super-sized ones.

“We are monitoring usage closely and have not identified any supply chain issues,” a spokesperson said in an email Monday.

The rising water is cause for concern near Portage la Prairie.

“We have a lot of folks that live year-round (at the south edge of Lake Manitoba) and they’re predicting some five-foot waves in that area, so that will be a concern,” Portage Mayor Irvine Ferris said.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has warned the wind could cause power outages in the area. While Portage itself has fared better than other centres this spring, the weather has been relentless, Ferris said.

“It just keeps coming… We’re definitely seeing the effects of climate change in these severe weather events, weather patterns.”

Full and partial provincial park closures were announced Monday, with boat launches closed at several beaches.

Closures in the Whiteshell area remain in effect, where people are “praying and hoping” winds don’t prove to be as strong as forecast, said Allison Baker-Thiessen, who runs Nutimik Lodge with her husband, Harry Thiessen.

“There’s a few lodges along the way, and they’re right on the water. So those winds, if they all of a sudden come strong enough, they could knock down your sandbag wall and breach your dike barrier,” she said Monday.

Northern parts of the Whiteshell area have been evacuated and a local state of emergency remains in place for the entire park, but Baker-Thiessen said the couple will fight tooth and nail to stay.

“There’s no way my husband’s going to leave that place. He says he’s hunkered down until he truly can’t hunker down anymore.”

Meantime, in Virden — under a 90-km/h wind warning — deputy mayor Tina Williams said the town is preparing to clean up the expected mess of fallen trees and debris.

“We just have to be ready to go out if we have to,” she said. “After all the rain and everything we’ve had this year, our public works guys are ready for anything.

“We are battening down the hatches.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca