Southern Manitoba city flooded after 103 mm of rain in 4 hours

Streets, basements and businesses were flooded come out after a torrential rainstorm hammered the southern Manitoba urban center of Steinbach on th nighttime.

Vehicles were left wing stranded in sudden lakes as the city —  40 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg — was hit with 103 millimetres of rain in just four hours and 135 mm by the time it all stopped, according to Environment Canada.

"It was pouring like you can't believe," said Coun. Bill Hiebert. "I had a call at 3 a.m. from a resident saying he had three feet of water in his basement."

It was worse for the Steinbach and Area Animal Rescue building, which took in almost two metres (six feet) of water, according to vice president Graham Pollock.

"We're in the process right now of just contacting all of our fosters to see who's open to take some of our cats that we've got in the building. We've got 22 cats and kittens in the building right now so we're in the process of moving them out," he said.

"Then we can we can start doing what we need to do in terms of pumping and getting the water out of the basement."

The upper level of the building is where the animals are kept, but the lower level is where all the cat and dog food is stored, along with kitty litter and kennels.

It just so happened to also be chock full of items for a fundraising yard sale planned for this weekend.

"And it's all floating around right now. So I don't know, it's pretty bad," said Pollock, noting the agency's boardroom is also in the lower level.

The property backs onto a creek that took in a lot of the rain and then swelled, overflowing its banks and flowing into the animal rescue building through the basement window wells, he said.

"Our insurance covers overland flooding but we're a not-for-profit organization and … our deductible for our insurance is $25,000. This is a hit that that we obviously could ill afford to have happen."

Environment Canada meteorologist Chris Stammers said a line of thunderstorms formed just south of Winnipeg late Thursday night, creating a narrow swath of heavy rainfall across west-to-east line.

"We had what's called training thunderstorms, so kind of a line that continuously hits the same area," he said.

Steinbach was hardest hit. Sprague in the southeast corner had 84 mm, Marchand had 58 mm, St. Pierre-Jolys had 33 mm and Zhoda had 25 mm.

"Quite variable over short distances," Stammers said. "It's a very humid air mass for this time of the year and that can produce the very heavy rainfall that we're seeing. It's certainly not a fall like pattern that we're [typically] in."

The high temperature for the day in Steinbach was 18 C at 1 a.m. Friday as that warm air moved into the city through the evening.

The storm hit almost exactly one year from the last major flooding incident in the city on Sept. 16-17, 2024. That one dropped 156 mm of rain.

"We didn't expect this kind of rain again" said Hiebert, adding the city is in the process of increasing capacity its sewer system.

In an incident where too much rain comes in a short time, the current sewer system can't keep up up because a lot of people's drainwater also goes into it, so everything backs up, he said.

Hiebert said the streets were cleared a couple of hours after the rain stopped and the system could catch up.

For him personally, he learned from last year and added a sump pump to his own home. While it didn't prevent all water from coming in, it certainly limited it, he said.

"I'll have to do some drying but I won't have the $25,000 damage I had last year."

Reporter

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