It's been a very active few days over southern MB, with some of the most severe weather we've seen in years. It started off with a couple of strong nightime thunderstorms that rolled through Winnipeg last Sunday and Tuesday nights giving heavy rain and strong winds. Then Friday and Saturday saw two major tornado events, one that produced an F4 tornado in Elie that caused severe damage, and then at least 3 tornadoes over southwest MB Saturday night, two rated at least F3, one with a damage path almost 2 km wide. Friday night through Sunday night also produced severe thunderstorms across southern MB each night.. with severe winds causing major damage in the Whiteshell Saturday night, and large hail and heavy rain in other places (including over 100 mm near the Peace Gardens Saturday night!) Winnipeg was hit with two severe storms Saturday night.. one that brought 107 km/h wind gusts in the evening that caused tree damage in parts of the city, and one that produced twoonie to hardball size hail in the north end overnight. The stormy weather made a final appearance last night with heavy rains south and east of Winnipeg.
The stormy week has brought my monthly rainfall total in Charleswood up to 118 mm, almost 30 mm above average for June. In northern and eastern areas of the city, monthly rainfall totals are over 150 mm. What a difference compared to last year. To put it in perspective, consider that I've recorded more rain in June this year than I recorded all of last May, June, July and August combined last year (total 114 mm)
The good news is that we won't be getting any more severe storms or heavy rain for awhile.. at least the rest of this week. Drier and cooler air has spread in from the west, which will stabilize things and give us a much needed period of dry weather. After a cool day tomorrow with a chance of some light showers, sunny and warmer weather will move in for Thursday through Saturday. The next chance for showers or thunderstorms will be by Sunday as a low pressure trough moves in from the west. Until then, enjoy the nice quiet weather!
Last weekend's tornado activity was captured by many. The below link to U-Tube has to be one of the better vids of the Elie tornado. Great work on your blog site Rob. Please keep it up.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtube.com/watch?v=32L5OtnIPGk
From severe weather to fall like conditions. Saskatoon dropped to 4 C under an arctic ridge this morning. The ridge is projected to be right over the red river basin by dawn tomorrow. Winnipeg airport usaully gets colder than Regina & Saskatoon under the same air mass because of cold air drainage in the vicinity of the airport.
ReplyDeleteUnless we can hang on to some lake effect cloud/ showers ... Environment Canada's forecast low of 7 C is far too optimistic. If clear skies and a light northwest flow materialize, temperatures at Winnipeg airport will plunge dramitically ... morning lows of 2 to 3 C wouldn't surprise me at all. Isnt't it almost July ?!
Dan
Chris..
ReplyDeleteYes, great video of the Elie tornado from formation to dissipation. It lasted over 30 minutes and as you can see, there was no "chasing" involved for this one. The videographer just parked his car and watched the whole thing unfold directly in front of him from start to finish. Very rare.. usually these things are moving at a fairly good clip and requires filming on the fly. But the Elie tornado was very slow moving, and sat over the same area for a long time. It sure packed a powerful punch at the base though as you can see from the video. That's why it did such extreme damage..
Note the second tornado at the end of the video.. this was the Elm Creek tornado that was on the ground just south of the Elie one.. although the Elm Creek tornado mainly stayed over open fields..
Dan..
ReplyDeleteFall-like is a good way to describe it.. it definitely had that late September or October feel to it this afternoon!
I guess the big question is whether or not we'll clear tonight. I'm not convinced we will.. still lots of low cloud around us, and the clearing is slow from the north. Tonight, the 850 mb cool core stays over us so I think we'll see this cloud hanging in most of the night with some input off the warm lakes. On top of that, we still have fairly high dewpoints in the +8-10c range, so it'll take awhile to dry out the low levels, and with all the rain we've had here this past week, that won't be easy. Winds tonight will also be light as the high drifts over us, which will make it harder to scour out all this cloud. Just as well.. I don't want to wake up to +3C this time of the year!
I grew up in Hartley area Your video footage is amazing Glad no one was hurt You sure got some excellent video footage.
ReplyDelete