Flood-hit western Manitoba, where people were stranded on rooftops and roads have been washed away, could be in for another round of heavy rain.
“Unfortunately, today there is another significant severe weather threat for the area, where there is the possibility of flash flooding once again, with potentially upwards of 100 millimetres or more of rain coming,” Keane Kokolsky, a meteorologist with Environment Canada’s storm prediction centre in Winnipeg, said Tuesday morning.
The exact track of the storms is still a little unclear, but “all of southern Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan is under a substantial severe weather threat today,” he said.
“We’ve upgraded to an extreme risk, the highest on the scale, with modes of severe weather possible from tornadoes … large hail, damaging winds upwards of 100-130 km/h and very heavy rain.”
Up to 150 people are out of their homes after flash flooding in the municipality of Swan Valley West as communities in Manitoba’s Parkland region continue to deal with the aftermath of heavy rains Sunday.
The neighbouring municipality of Minitonas-Bowsman declared a state of local emergency on Monday, and multiple highways remain closed in the region.
Environment Canada said Minitonas received the largest amount of rainfall in the region, with about 148 millimetres of rain in only a few hours Sunday night into early Monday morning. Swan Valley got about 72 millimetres.
The rain caused rivers to swell and overflow their banks.
Many communities are dealing with power outages, with Manitoba Hydro posting on social media that “damage to our equipment is severe and some areas like Minitonas are still impossible or unsafe to access.”
The damage includes multiple spans of lines and poles down in more than 100 individual outages spread across a wide area in southwest Manitoba and the Parkland region, the Crown corporation posted.
Minitonas is dealing with a gas line rupture, a boil water advisory and bridges that have been overtaken by water.
The Municipality of Minitonas-Bowsman posted on Facebook Tuesday morning that the community is currently without communications and has intermittent water and sewer “as the system works to recover.”
The Town of Swan River, about 15 kilometres west of Minitonas, has posted on its own Facebook page that sandbagging volunteers are needed as water is still rising and more rain is coming.
Premier Wab Kinew said conservation officers helped sandbag properties along the Swan River until 4 a.m.
Even after Tuesday’s storms pass through, the wet weather isn’t over, Kokolsky said.
“On the backside [it] looks like there is potentially a wraparound with this system and some more showery weather and potentially some more thundershowers.”
He reiterated that the weather models “give us an idea” of the track of the storms, but he can’t say exactly where they will hit, and the amount of precipitation is dependent on how slowly the storms move.
“Hopefully the worst of it misses them,” Kokolsky said. “But there’s a lot of moisture in the air today. These storms are going to be really loaded with precipitation.”
