Manitoba Hydro restores significant damage, hundreds of outages over months of stormy weather

A wood utility pole is knocked upside down, with the attached power lines hanging down on the ground. Fallen tree branches surround the area.

Multiple summer storms brought down trees, poles, and power lines, causing outages for tens of thousands of customers throughout the summer.

High winds, heavy rain, lightning, floods and tornadoes hammered swaths of southern and central Manitoba throughout the summer, causing major widespread outages and two of the worst summer storm events in recent memory in Manitoba. In June and July, two separate storms each knocked out power for more than 30,000 customers in various parts of Winnipeg and surrounding area, causing severe damage. In both cases, stormy weather snapped poles, downed power lines, brought tree branches onto lines and even uprooted entire trees.

A large tree branch has snapped off and hangs down on a power line next to an SUV parked on a driveway.

Crews responded to many tree-related outages after severe weather brought branches and entire trees down onto power lines.

Four wood utility poles on one line have been knocked down and lie across a field. Attached power lines are also close to the ground.

High winds and stormy weather snapped wood poles, bringing down sections of power line.

“At the time, that June storm was the worst summer storm damage we’d ever seen — but July’s storm topped that,” said Manitoba Hydro Media Relations Officer Peter Chura.

“The damage was worse, more widespread, more customers without power,” Chura said. “It really was a tremendous challenge to try to get to all of it.”

Other parts of the province experienced their share of severe weather and outages, with two separate June flooding events sweeping through areas up along the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border. Flood waters washed out poles and roads, in some cases completely cutting off access to affected areas.

Multiple tornadoes swept through the province, including one in western Manitoba that severely damaged a section of power line in June. In early September, another tornado wreaked havoc in Winnipeg, causing a multi-day outage that was difficult to restore.

“There [was] one back lane where there [were] five poles damaged,” Chura said. “That back lane is very narrow, and there [were] a lot of fallen trees and other debris, and it [was] challenge to get enough heavy equipment in there.”

Land between a gravel road and a treed area has been washed out underneath a power line. A wood utility pole leans over where the ground has washed away.

Floods washed out roads and power lines in areas of western Manitoba.

Crews worked to safely restore thousands of customers this summer, in some cases accessing damage by air where entire sections of highway had been washed out by flood waters.

“The past several months have been exceptional, and our crews responded with exceptional restoration efforts,” said Chura. “We appreciate how difficult extended outages can be, and we thank our customers for their patience and support while we tackled a tremendous amount of storm damage.”