Manitoba Hydro warns of widespread power outages after severe storm with hail and heavy rain

A large, organized line of thunderstorms formed south of the U.S. border near Emerson and tracked north through the Red River Valley and into Manitoba's Interlake region on the night of June 9–10, 2026, delivering catastrophic conditions across a wide swath of the prairies. Winnipeg alone received more than 120 millimetres of rain, overwhelming sewer systems and flooding basements with raw sewage, inundating underpasses where hundreds of vehicles were abandoned, and downing trees that crushed parked cars — damage visible in images from the scene. Manitoba Hydro described the event as 'one of the worst summer storm events in recent memory,' recording 1,000 separate outages that left 32,000 customers without power, with more than 25,000 still affected by midday Wednesday. Wind gusts reached 130 km/h near Deloraine and 94 km/h in Winnipeg, while hailstones ranging from nickel-sized to baseball-sized were reported; Manitoba Public Insurance had already received 5,000 hail claims by Wednesday afternoon, with the storm on pace to break a 30-year provincial insurance record. In Saskatchewan, a tornado near Oxbow-Alameda destroyed at least one farm entirely — the Brock family survived by sheltering in a basement bathroom as the structure was stripped to its foundation — while the third major storm in a week left communities like Carlyle expressing deep fatigue. A secondary story emerged around Canada's Alert Ready system, with Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham and many residents reporting receiving upward of 20 emergency alerts in a single evening; both Environment and Climate Change Canada and system operator Pelmorex launched investigations into whether the volume of alerts was appropriate, echoing similar concerns raised in India after that country's newly launched Cell Broadcast System sent late-night weather alerts to millions of residents in the Delhi-NCR region.