Thousands without power as storm ravages southern Manitoba

Thousands of customers in southern Manitoba were without power by early Sunday afternoon as rainfall and storm conditions continued to ravage the province.

Significant rainfall and snowfall in areas like Winnipeg, Dauphin, Brandon, Portage la Prairie, Morden and Virden have led to more than 13,000 people without power.

READ: Winnipeggers deal with streets, basements flooded as weekend rainfall continues in southern Manitoba

By 12:30 p.m. Manitoba Hydro was reporting nearly 900 power outages.

“Wind and icing throughout the province has led to many outages and poor road conditions,” said Manitoba Hydro in a tweet.

Streets and highway closures throughout southern Manitoba is also impacting the speed at which crews can work on damaged lines and restore power to the affected communities.

More than a dozen highway sections are closed, according to Manitoba 511.

“We’re working as quickly and safely as possible under the circumstances,” Manitoba Hydro tweeted. “Crews have to use the same roads as everyone else, so any shutdowns or unsafe driving conditions will cause delays to our outage response. In many cases we won’t be able to offer restoration times.”

View Manitoba Hydro outage map, here.

Environment Canada issued rain and snow warnings for most of the southern half of Manitoba.

The weather agency says a Colorado Low continues to bring significant rain, with amounts reaching 30 to 60 millimetres in total for southern Manitoba this weekend.

It notes that this much precipitation over frozen or saturated ground may lead to localized flooding including in basements and underpasses.

–With files from The Canadian Press.