Tornadoes touchdown in Manitoba Wednesday

While it’s fairly nice out now, the skies looked a lot more ominous yesterday, after multiple tornadoes touched during a storm in Manitoba, with one of the tornadoes hitting Swan Lake First Nation, causing damages to their powwow grounds, just weeks before their annual event.

The storm entered Manitoba from Saskatchewan on Wednesday, with one of several tornados touching down on the west side of Swan Lake First Nation.

The tornado damaged the roof of the community’s powwow arbour ripping it clean off and damaged another house.

Councillor Sean McKinney says they were lucky the tornado wasn’t extraordinarily strong, or it could have been a lot worse.

“It actually went right over a couple of houses, visual inspection the houses are fine, but I think we are going to get someone to go check the structures to make sure,” said McKinney.

Footage was posted by Prairie Storm Chaser Braydon Morisseau, who was following the storm, where he captured the moment the Tornado formed before it touched down near the First Nation, and while no one was injured, the damages to the Powwow grounds were fairly severe, which is a problem for the First Nation as their annual powwow event takes place in just a few weeks, but Sean says the arbor should be fixed in time.

“But if we can’t use it then we have a space off to the west we are going to set up for a temporary powwow, we won’t have our arbor if that’s the case, but we’re still going to have our powwow and were still going to have fun,” said McKinney.

McKinney says due to this incident, they are now working on an emergency preparedness plan in hopes it will help limit damages and keep the community members safe.