Intense Summer Thunderstorms Drop Nickel-Sized Hail in Manitoba

Soggy Severe Weather

A series of particularly strong thunderstorms made their way through Manitoba, Canada on the evening of 24 June 2016. The storms, which started in the southwestern corner and moved through the Red River Valley, dumped an average of 30-40 mm of rain. The hardest hit areas, highlighted by red in the PulseRad℠ radar alternative image below, recorded approximately 125 mm.

Besides rain, the storm also dumped pieces of hail measuring up to an inch. Winnipeg was hit particularly hard by both the rain and the hail. The below video shows the intensity of the storm during Friday evening.

What a storm! Never seen this happen before but the sewer cover was moving.. Wow! #Winnipeg#MBStormpic.twitter.com/aLsqBu3LDE

— Brian (@trop1kalstorm) June 25, 2016

Total Lightning Report

During the storm, Earth Networks Total Lightning Network™ detected approximately 130,203 total lightning strikes over a 12-hour period. The time-lapse video above shows both the cloud-to-ground (yellow) and in-cloud (purple) lightning strikes.

Quite the light show here in #bdnmb right now! #cbcmb#mbstormpic.twitter.com/JhorFssjWm

— Riley Laychuk (@RileyLaychuk) June 25, 2016

These strikes generated 50 Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts (DTA’s) as our network tracked the storm cells moving eastward throughout the region.

Power Outages

The severity of the storm caused power outages across the province of Manitoba. Fallen trees in Carman, Man. knocked out power to approximately 2,500 customers. Manitoba Hydro reported that on Saturday morning there were as many as 5,000 customers without power.

#mbstorm Our crews have been responding to outage reports in most of southern Manitoba since 3 a.m. https://t.co/cNBZgb8BBn

— Manitoba Hydro (@manitobahydro) June 25, 2016