Wind rips roof off Foxwarren rink

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This article was published 26/08/2024 (542 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Heartbroken” is the word that Foxwarren’s Karen Butler used to describe how she felt when she saw the roof torn off the town’s hockey rink, as 100 km/h winds ripped through the area early Sunday morning.

“It’s horrible, breaks my heart,” Butler said. “It’s the hub of the town and where NHLers Pat Falloon, Ronnie Low and Mark Wotton learned to skate.

“And you know, all our kids grew up skating in that rink too, I even skated in that rink, and I’m 68 years old. It’s the hub of the town.”

Danny Johnston grew up in Foxwarren and now lives in Alberta, but he is back home to help his dad with the harvest.

“My dad and I were watching the storm this morning, and the winds were snapping off trees, just like that. We kind of looked at each other during the storm and were thinking about maybe heading to the basement,” Johnston said.

The “strong thunderstorm” developed along a cold front in Montana Saturday night, said Kyle Ziolkowski, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

It tracked northeastward, hitting southeastern Saskatchewan first and then southwestern Manitoba, and didn’t show signs of weakening until it reached the Interlake region — approaching Lake Winnipeg.

“The storm produced straight-line winds,” Ziolkowski said Sunday morning. “Looking at our station data that are recorded, the strongest wind gusts we see right now are 106 kilometers an hour in St. Lazare, but I assume there’s stronger winds than that elsewhere in that storm, as it passed through.

“The storm also dropped some pretty heavy rainfall, anywhere between 30 to 50 millimetres through parts of western Manitoba.”

One weather watcher posted on social media that wind gusts reached 160 km/h, but Ziolkowski said he is still working to confirm wind speed.

Studying the storm on weather radar, Ziolkowski’s said he noticed something called “bow echoes.”

“When we look at radar, it has kind of a bow shape, like the shape of an archer’s bow,” said Ziolkowski. “And when you see that, there are severe winds that are forming in the back of the storm and kind of pushing the front edge out.

“And that’s where the strongest winds are, at the apex of that bow. So, when you see that on radar, it’s indicative that you have really strong winds on the forward flank of the storm, and there’s straight-line wind damage.”

As Johnston and his dad drove through town after the storm, they crossed the railway tracks heading towards the rink and started to see piedes of the rink’s tin roof “everywhere.”

Johnston said the sight “was like a gut punch.”

“It was pretty sad, and pretty tough to look up in the rafters and see all the banners and then see that there’s no roof left on the one side,” he said.

The original Foxwarren hockey rink opened in January 1912, but the current building opened in December of 1949, at a cost of $30,000, according to 1000towns.ca, which is a website and social media platform that connects small Canadian towns and travellers.

Johnston said the rink was “kind of the only glue left holding the town together.”

“Two of my friends, Patrick Graham and Steven Chipelski and I spent half our lives there playing hockey. And I guess that’s the hardest part for all of us guys, right? Even after our minor hockey, we played a lot of years of senior in that place and won a lot of league championships and stuff. Foxwarren is known for its hockey and figure skating,” he said.

Johnston added that while a crowd had gathered in and around the rink, he didn’t hear about any plans for repairs or next steps.

A change in the weather is on the way for Western Manitoba said Ziolkowski. The tropical airmass from the central United States that produced the hot and humid conditions will start to “move along,” making the atmosphere less humid for the next 24 hours.

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