Storm’s impact lingers

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This article was published 25/04/2022 (1657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Communities in Westman were still dealing with the after-effects of severe weekend weather on Monday.

That included Brandon, which received 26.7 millimetres of rain and three centimetres of snow on Saturday alone, along with the strongest recorded gust of wind from anywhere in the province at 100 kilometres an hour.

According to Tobin Praznik, the city’s emergency co-ordinator, crews received 14 calls related to the risk of overland flooding.

Though there were isolated power outages in the region, Praznik said there was no impact on municipal operations.

No flood update was provided by the province on Monday, but Praznik said that provincial flood forecasters are still updating flow forecasts. At the moment, the city is still preparing for potential moderate flooding as per the province’s last update pending any new information.

According to the federal government’s real-time water level and flow tracking station for the Assiniboine River in Brandon, the water level was 357.2 metres above sea level and discharging 103 cubed metres of water per second.

As of noon Sunday, those figures had increased to a water level of 357.528 metres above sea level and a discharge of 140 cubed metres of water per second. By Monday at noon, the water level had risen to 357.702 metres above sea level and was discharging 163 metres per second.

The weekend’s weather wreaked havoc on the area’s roads, with a combination of icy conditions and power outages cited as the reason for school closures and cancelled bus routes in the Fort La Bosse School Division, Rolling River School Division and the Beautiful Plains School Division.

As of 8:45 a.m. Monday, Manitoba Hydro was reporting 639 total outages affecting 13,229 customers. By 4:15 p.m., those figures had gone down to 431 outages affecting 6,556 customers.

At that point, there were still outages around Killarney, Neepawa, Hartney, Virden, Melita, Pierson, Elk Ranch and Clear Lake. The most widespread outages were in the western Interlake region and north of Riding Mountain National Park, including Dauphin.

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, Wasagaming received around 20 centimetres of snow, leaving the weather station with approximately 76 centimetres of snow on the ground.

Around 2:30 p.m., Manitoba Hydro made an announcement on its Facebook page that municipal crews near Russell and Erickson were helping to clear roads so that crews could make repairs by the end of the day.

The Dauphin area was reported to have more than 50 power poles broken and thick layers of ice that needed to be removed from power lines. Some customers in that area were expected to be without power until Wednesday or Thursday.

Near Virden, 10 spans of power lines needed to be rebuilt and three poles needed to be reset.

According to Elisha Dacey, communications manager with CAA Manitoba, the 89 tow-related calls received by the organization on Sunday were more than double the average daily total of 40.

There was a backlog of tow calls left from the weekend, and Dacey believed that the Monday average of 150 calls would also be surpassed.

Environment Canada’s seven-day forecast predicts a 60 per cent chance of rain showers for Brandon during the day on Friday, with rain expected from Friday night to Sunday, when there’s a chance it could turn to snow.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark