Farmers near Oak River and Rivers are surveying the damage after a storm pummeled fields and yards with hail, wind and torrential rain.
“It’s like the trees got shredded,” said Reeve Bob Christie of the RM of Oakview.
The storm cut a swath between Rivers and Oak River, just northwest of Brandon early Wednesday evening. Manitoba Agriculture’s Rivers weather station shows the area got 42 millimetres of rain and saw a maximum wind speed of 101 kilometres per hour.
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Photos posted to Facebook show hail ranging from pea- to quarter-sized to stones larger than golf balls.
Eric McLean, who farms in the area, caught media attention when he posted photos of the devastation to Twitter, including his flooded fields, hail lying like snow on the ground and a house with shredded red vinyl siding.
His wheat looks “as if you weed-eated it,” he said.
The leaves are ragged, though he expects they will recover with delayed maturity.
The flooded field he posted an image of was seeded to soybeans. They’re the best able of his crops to handle the moisture, “but they can only hold their breath for so long,” McLean said.
The question will be if the soybeans and canola still have viable growing points. The canola had stalled in the recent heat and was under pressure from flea beetles. There may also be enough ungerminated canola left to make a crop, he added.
He was filling out hail insurance paperwork when he spoke to the Co–operator and he expected to place claims on all his seeded acres.
“We don’t know whether we’re going to see anywhere close to the yields we were hoping to get and that will affect our bottom line, obviously, big time,” he said.
Ron Krahn farms between Oak River and Rivers. Much of his farm was in the path of the storm.
“Usually most crops can come back from a hail storm when the crop is little,” he said.
His soybeans and sunflowers were his greatest concern. His agronomist was predicting a stand reduction, and it’s too late for reseeding to be a good option, he said.
Krahn said he expected to place a hail insurance claim on about 40 per cent of his acres.
In the town of Oak River, hail, wind and falling debris battered houses and infrastructure, Christie said.
The community’s lagoon and water plant briefly were knocked out of service by a power outage. An emergency phone tower was bent but is still working, he said.
McLean said many houses had windows smashed and siding shredded. He said he’d also seen fallen trees on vehicles.
