Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
The rain kept coming down as Mike Ledarney was already pumping water out of his basement in Teulon on Tuesday. The resident of the Manitoba town, about 60 kilometres north of Winnipeg, said he came home early from work after his sister called to break the news that his basement was flooding. By the time he got back, his dad had a sump pump running, but there was already about 30 centimetres of water in the basement. "It's obviously a lot of stress … having to deal with that, and not knowing always in certainty … what's going to happen next," Ledarney said outside his house later in the day.
Jacques Courcelles still vividly recalls his parents' refrigerator floating in the kitchen, anchored like a boat, its cord still attached to the wall outlet under water. "My parents had water over top of the kitchen counters. The air in the fridge was what was making the fridge float," he said, his mind flashing back to April 30, 1997, when the community of Ste. Agathe was first to fall to the Flood of the Century.
While communities in southern Manitoba battle flooding from the Red and Assiniboine rivers, people in the Interlake region are scrambling to save their homes from rising waters. Overland flooding from the Icelandic River, which runs into Lake Winnipeg, has washed out many roads and drenched fields in the municipality of Bifrost-Riverton. That municipality includes the community of Riverton and numerous hamlets, and surrounds the town of Arborg, about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
As southern Manitoba saw a deluge of rain this weekend that forced people in several communities from their homes due to flooding, the province said the region saw four to six times the normal amount of precipitation this spring. Southern and southeastern Manitoba, along with the portion of the Red River basin in the United States, have received 120 to 160 millimetres of snow and rain since April 1 — which is between 400 to 600 per cent of normal, the province said in a flood bulletin on Sunday evening. The same region received a basin-wide average of 40 to 50 millimetres of rainfall over the past 48 hours alone, according to the province.
A state of local emergency has been declared in the southern Manitoba city of Morden as rising water levels forced dozens of people from their homes, the city's mayor says. Brandon Burley said so far, about 50 residences have been affected, but that number is expected to rise amid a rainfall warning in place for much of the southern half of the province. Flood crews are keeping a close eye on the area's watershed, which was already high after significant rainfall last weekend. That rain melted accumulations of snow from a storm last month.
Much of southern Manitoba is dealing with overland flooding and high water warnings. The province says the Red River continues to rise, a situation only made worse by last weekend’s storm. Pumps are running around the clock in St. Jean Baptiste. Justin Heinrichs, who was working in town, had to stop to take in just how high the water is, noting he hasn’t seen it this high in a while.
Some Winkler residents narrowly avoided a flood evacuation Monday night after a broken culvert caused floodwaters to rise in the southern Manitoba city. Around 9 p.m., City of Winkler public works supervisor Terry Froese got a call that a culvert near Highway 32 had buckled, preventing water from flowing through it and putting extra pressure on the dike. When functioning, the culvert drains water east of the highway.
Homeowners, farmers and businesses in and around the southern Manitoba town of Morden are working to adapt to extreme drought conditions brought on by intense heat and a lack of precipitation in recent months. And while it might be an eyebrow-raising sight to see watering still going on at the Minnewasta Golf and Country Club, the club says it's worked up a plan to funnel thousands of litres of town wastewater to the course, allowing it to keep watering tee boxes and greens and not Lake Minnewasta, where drinking water comes from.
Another Manitoba community grappling with low precipitation levels has declared an extreme drought and is asking local residents and businesses to significantly scale back on water usage. Morden declared an extreme drought Tuesday afternoon, citing levels 2.7 metres below normal in Lake Minnewasta, which is where the southern Manitoba city gets its water from. The community and several others in the Interlake and western Manitoba have been experiencing drought conditions for months. Late last week, Morden Mayor Brandon Burley said water supply restrictions were likely on the horizon.
A dry fall, winter and now spring have taken a toll in southern Manitoba, where the City of Morden says it is experiencing a severe drought and imploring people to conserve water. The current level of Lake Minnewasta, the source of Morden's water, is nearly seven feet (just over two metres) below the full supply level, the city said in a notice posted on its website. Mayor Brandon Burley said levels that low have not been seen in the city, roughly 100 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, since 1983. "In terms of recent history, it's unprecedented," he said, noting islands are "popping out" of Lake Minnewasta.
