Multiple tornadoes touch down in Manitoba storm Wednesday
Several tornadoes touched down on what proved to be a wild and windy Wednesday in southwestern Manitoba, an Environment Canada meteorologist said Thursday morning.
"Sounds like there was multiple touchdowns," senior meteorologist Dan Fulton said. "There's definitely several — like maybe four separate ones."
The reports Fulton has seen said tornadoes mostly touched down in rural areas.
FORECAST: Severe storms target southern Ontario and Quebec, damaging hail possible
The worst damage he's heard of was at Swan Lake First Nation, where there was a touchdown that damaged the powwow grounds and the roof of a home. No one was injured.
It will take a while for Environment Canada to confirm the exact number of tornadoes produced by the storm in Manitoba, which appear to all have been spawned by the same storm, Fulton said.
The storm blew into the province from Saskatchewan, with the first tornado warning being issued at 3:30 p.m. for Binscarth, a village near the Saskatchewan border.
Over the course of three hours, the storm tracked southeast for about 300 kilometres, from Binscarth to the Morden-Winkler area, around 100 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.
Reports of tornadoes were made in Rapid City and Rivers area, around 220 kilometres west of Winnipeg, and near Baldur, around 160 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, Fulton said.
There were no reports of tornadoes around Morden-Winkler, but they did get hit by damaging winds and golf-ball-sized hail, he said.
"I think we were pretty lucky in that … these guys mostly stayed in the agricultural areas."
Fulton expects the weather will be calmer for a couple of days, but said stormy weather may return Saturday.
This article, written by Lara Schroeder, was originally published for CBC News.
Thumbnail image courtesy: Submitted by Toban Dyck via CBC
