Manitoba’s first taste of summer storm season was an impressive one — with tornado warnings in the western part of the province and hail falling in parts of Winnipeg and other southern Manitoba communities.
Environment Canada meteorologist Rose Carlsen said the tornado warning was actually the first in Canada since early September of last year.
“It is a little early — it’s not unheard of to get weather like that at this time of year, at this latitude — however it is a little earlier than our typical season,” Carlsen told 680 CJOB’s The Start.
“We normally expect to be issuing more tornado warnings closer to the June-July region.”
The “impressive” swath of hail that briefly walloped the south of the province Wednesday evening saw different sizes of frozen precipitation falling, depending on where you were watching the storm from.
“(It was) quite an impressive swath of pea- to nickel-sized hail that fell over a lot of areas, but we did get quite a few reports of larger hailstones — on the order of quarter-sized all the way up to toonies,” she said.
The storm came on the heels of a very warm afternoon, something Carlsen said isn’t unusual at this time of year, although Manitoba isn’t likely to see record-breaking daily temperatures in the near future. The heat, however, is here to stay.
“It is warmer than normal. We’re typically seeing highs around the upper teens to low 20s.”