“It was a bad storm, really bad,” Ayre, a native of England, said. “It is the biggest storm I have seen in Canada, personally.”

He said he received a text message on his phone that there was a tornado warning for Minto. He was having supper and went in his truck to Minto to take a look. He saw the storm, but felt they were okay, as it was tracking to the east.

“Then I looked around and saw another lot from the north.”

His wife Heather called scared as the hail was smashing windows. The first stone hit his truck and since it was big, he decided he should move to the bulk fuel tanks in Minto for some protection. It worked to a degree, but the wind was so strong, it turned his truck around.

“I was facing west,” Ayre said, “and by the end, I was facing north.”

When the storm was over, he saw corn completely mowed off. He returned home to assess the damage. They lost windows and siding on the house, and had damage to the roof. All of their steel buildings looked like someone “took a ball peen hammer” to them. The hot tub was destroyed, there were holes the size of golf balls in the pool heater, and the shelterbelts were stripped bare. There were windows smashed in three vehicles. Ayre has been hearing the same thing around the area.

“I’m hearing similar stories from Elgin to Pelican Lake. It hit 12 miles wide. It was a terrific wind with huge hail.”

Cathy and Pat Workman can attest to the damage. They live about five miles southwest of Minto. Cathy Workman said they saw the dark clouds out to the west and moving to the northeast. Like Ayre, she thought they might escape the worst of it. Pat was out looking at his phone and watching the clouds moving away, and then they started moving towards them. Describing it as a “wall of black”, they kept an eye on it, then headed for the basement.

“We had a shed that got thrown from the wind, away from the house,” Cathy said, “but one of the poles hit the roof. Our windows were broken with hail the size of golf balls or bigger to start. It was frightening, very loud. We heard a bang and the house shook. We thought the roof was going, but it was the shed pole hitting it.”

The hydro pole nearby was okay, but several in the area went down. Cathy said they were out of power until 1:00am.

During the storm, there was one confirmed tornado touchdown near Waskada. Workman said she does not want to speculate whether or not that happened near Minto.

As well as their house and yard damage, the couple has a cattle yard southeast of them. The storm hit it as well. A few cattle took off as some fencing was knocked down. They and neighbours were able to collect the livestock and were fixing the fence. The cattle did not seem happy.

“They got pretty spooked. They don’t have a place to hide.”

Workman said she was happy with the quick assistance they received. Chad Reimer from Southwest Agencies talked to them that night, and Parkland Construction fixed the roof the next day. Adjustors were looking at the buildings the day of speaking, but she was not sure when crop insurance would be around.

Ayre said some crops in the area would be completely gone, while some will grow back. Some wheat and canola was already starting to peek out again the day after, and there are some new growing points for the corn. Soybeans are likely too badly damaged.

“I had my hail insurance on just in time,” Ayre stated. “The hail and crop insurance will come into play.”

Dave Koroscil, the Manager of Claim Services for Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation in Portage said they are already out working on the results of the storm. Some adjustors were out by Sunday. He said what everyone is finding is in line with what you would expect.

“It is probably what we would call a typical hailstorm,” Koroscil explained. “It hit a large area with sporadic damage, from 5% to 50%, a real difference in size and scope.”

He said the damage ranged over a large area of the province. In and around Minto to Pelican Lake were hit hard, as were areas farther east like Darlingford and around Winkler. He said right now there were around 300 crop insurance claims, with just over a third of them in the Minto-Ninette area. As well, some producers also have hail insurance with MAASC, and there have been 150 claims on that, with 100 in the area.

Crop insurance, Koroscil explained, is more general, covering everything from frost to excess moisture, covering a certain amount of expected bushels. Hail insurance can be added on up to $250 per acre. He added they have about 90% coverage in the province with crop insurance, but it is harder to tell with hail, because some do not get it and others do it privately.

They have got a few more adjustors from other areas of the province, and are out full force. The complicating factor was that June 20 was the final date to plant in order to be covered by crop insurance. Anyone wanting to replant an area impacted by the storm was going to have to do it immediately. Koroscil said they were trying to get adjustors to those areas first.

“They will try to get as much re-seeded as possible, but the timing is really bad.”

There is also a policy where producers can re-seed, but leave a strip to show the damage, so adjustors can come back and look at their claim.

So far, Koroscil said they have no idea how much the dollar amount of damage is, but they have seen some bad areas.

“Some crops are just shredded,” he stated, “completely destroyed.”

Whether crops come back from the storm or not depends on many factors. Canola if it is 100% defoliated, Koroscil said, often is a 20% loss. Cereals can be hard to tell, as they often take a week to ten days to start showing regrowth. Soybeans and sunflowers if they get cut too low, they are finished. He said the adjustors take a look at the different crops, what state they are in, and then make their reports.

Overall, Koroscil thinks they are moving forward well. There are 300 claims, but claims are crops not farmers – there might be several per farm. This means they should be able to move quickly. He figures in ten days they could be done, and the compensation could soon follow.

“It is usually a quick process,” he explained. “It is based on criteria. I would bet within a couple of weeks, we would be making payments. Maybe the odd one will be out next week.”

Workman said she would be happy to never see this again. Ayre added these were problems you do not plan for, but have to deal with anyway. There was at least one silver lining in a very black cloud.

“There were no personal injuries,” Ayre said. “Things were insured, you can deal with that.”

 by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff