More heavy rain, severe winds on the way for southern Manitoba
Posted May 31, 2022 10:29 am.
Last Updated May 31, 2022 10:49 am.
Manitobans are dealing with more rain and wind in what is already one of the wettest springs on record.
A special weather event is continuing Tuesday, with severe gusts from 60 to 90 km/h expected in southern Manitoba.
The province was already hit with more rain in the Whiteshell, Red River Valley and Interlake areas on Monday.
A powerful Colorado low tracking into the province could create more than 1.5-metre-high waves crashing into shores.
Environment Canada predicts a band of showers and thunderstorms will move in from the south over the next few days.
“The concern there is we already have flooding conditions, already have a lot of standing water, saturated soil, so additional precipitation will only make the situation worse and prolonging whatever conditions people are dealing with right now,” said Natalie Hasell, the warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“We continue to be affected by the weather here, another Colorado low and it will not be pleasant for anyone.”
The province has been walloped by wet weather for weeks. It’s brought significant flooding, damage and evacuations in some areas.
There are currently 32 local states of emergency, the province said.
Hasell says if the rain becomes intense, water levels on lakes, streams and drains could rise rapidly and threaten low-lying areas, including roads, homes and other infrastructure.
She says there is also a severe wind effect warning for Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipegosis and Dauphin Lake, which will cause water levels to rise along shorelines, causing powerful waves.
“The winds are lining up with the lakes, so winds are out of the north and northwest for (Monday and Tuesday), so the southern beaches along most of our lakes are of concern in these weather conditions.”
RELATED: Clean-up efforts underway in flood-stricken Peguis First Nation: ‘Everything is just gone’
With more rain over the weekend, Winnipeg has now seen its second wettest spring since record keeping began in 1872.
March, April and May brought 246.9 mm of rain. That number is expected to rise over the next couple of days. The record is 325.4 mm, which was set all the way back in 1896.
“We only have two days left in meteorologic spring, so we could need roughly 80 mm of rain with this system at the Winnipeg airport to break this record,” said Scott Kehler, the chief scientist at Weatherlogics. “There is a small chance it could happen if the system if we have a lot of thunderstorms rolling through, but it is unlikely that we will reach that threshold.”
Hasell says this year is unlike any other that we have seen, and the next few weeks may not fair any better.
“We’ve had a scenario where the path of these lows have been consistently over the same areas, therefore southern Manitoba and a good chunk of central and northern Manitoba have been repeatedly affected by these systems.”
—With files from The Canadian Press.
