While a mixed blessing, severe and adverse weather hit parts of Manitoba on Saturday, June 6, ripping through several farmyards but dropping much-needed moisture.
“I guess I had a twister in my place as it took the roof off of my machine shed,” texted Ian Smith of Argyle.
Ian was on the phone talking to a neighbour when the storm hit. “I’m watching the radar. And then, all of a sudden the wind picked up and I hung up from him and man, and it just got crazy here. But, of course, it was still light sunshine and that. And I don’t know which way the wind was coming, but man, was it ever blowing.”
At one point, he could only see maybe a quarter of a mile because of the way the rain came down so hard, a bit of hail, but nothing much, to do no damage by no means.
He described it further. “I’m watching the trees bend and everything and saw the cattle running around in the yard. And I was concerned because I got a calf here that’s just three days old. So I see them running around, and within 10 minutes or so, it had settled down.”
So then, half an hour later, maybe 45 minutes later, the neighbour phones and says, “You know, there’s some tin off your roof there.” And I say, “Well, I know, off this one building.” I says, “I know the eaves trough has come down, and I just haven’t got around to putting it up.” And she says, “No, I mean the roof is off, the tin is gone.”
Charles Kehler, the owner/manager at A&H Dairy Farms Ltd. near Kleefeld in the rural municipality of Hanover narrated a three-minute video he had taken, right after a twister wreaked havoc on his dairy farm.
Charles said it might be pretty interesting, the sound, still some wind.
“We had a five-minute windstorm, didn’t think much of it, then walked outside to take care of something else and noticed some things were different. There’s supposed to be a domed roof on that tower. It’s gone. Now with that, there’s a feed room where we have our TMR mixer. The ceiling to that room is right here. The bin got knocked down; it’s empty, so that’s not a big deal.”
His narration continued. “But this piece of the framework here, that was the roof on our feed room. This was one of the augers coming out of one of the bins that luckily was empty. And that tin, and all this framework, was the roof to our feed room. So I got a massive insurance issue to take care of on Monday. The barn itself is fine, the cows are fine, just in case people are wondering. No, no one was hurt. There’s no fire, although the fire department has been here. We just got a massive cleanup to do.”
“Everybody’s safe; nobody got hurt,” said Bob Kleinsasser at the Suncrest Colony, near the corner of the 52 and 59 highways. The wind lasted about three minutes.
“Yeah, we got an inch and a half of rain, maybe two inches, because most of it didn’t go into the rain gauge. It’s worth it. Beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with that. I commented just the day before; I said I don’t care which form it comes in, as long as it’s much. We did need this, right?”
At the time of the call Bob said everybody’s out. “We’ve got about ten chainsaws going. Yeah, we’ve got roof damage. We have, where we raise the honey and the bees, the metal is off. It’s in the bush somewhere. Those chimney fans on the pig barn, you know the ones that go in through the roof, six of those blew off. But the fans are okay; it’s just the chimneys that are in the field somewhere: Yeah-yeah, one house where the metal blew off. And then a whole bunch of trees and other stuff. It’s the cleaning up, I guess it’s going to be a challenge, but we’ll keep on trucking.” •
— By Harry Siemens
