A hyper-localized windstorm wreaked havoc on a handful of properties just south of Tolstoi Monday evening. Homeowners are calling it a tornado.

Despite comments from Environment Canada downplaying the likelihood of a twister in the region, residents are convinced otherwise. 

To Bernard Sawatzky, downed hydro lines, mangled barns, and flattened crops are sufficient proof that something other than very strong winds whipped through his community.

Safely inside of his home at the time of the storm, Sawatzky did not technically see a funnel cloud. However, the inconsistent way his crops were flattened in small random swaths is, to him, indicative of a tornado.

In his seven years as a farmer in the RM of Emerson-Franklin, Sawatzky says he has never seen worse winds. In addition to stripping his barn of sheet metal and littering his yard with trees, the storm levelled ten acres of his corn; roughly one-sixth of his total yield.

Just across the street, the destruction is even worse. Sawatzky's neighbour, Mike Funk, farms cattle and grain. While his fields were not harmed in the same way Sawatzky’s were, his buildings were beaten up badly.

Mike Funk says he is still overwhelmed by the recent devastation. Reflecting on Tuesday's event, Funk says he was just getting back from a grocery run to Steinbach when the weather took a menacing turn.

He immediately took his wife and daughters to the basement to wait out the storm. After the house stopped shaking, they decided to assess the damage. 

“When we went upstairs and looked into the girls' bedroom you could see the sky through the ceiling,” states Funk. “The rafters had totally ripped off and the sheeting and the shingles were gone.”

An analysis of his acreage quickly showed Funk that his house was not the only valuable entity to sustain damage: two canvas topped storage buildings had been torn apart, a barn had its doors knocked in, and several pieces of heavy machinery had tipped over on their side.

“It was mass destruction everywhere,” he laughs, still admittedly in shock.

Another half a mile south, Jim Krueger’s barn sits in similar disrepair. Tuesday’s forceful winds peeled back a section of his tin roof exposing the older shingles underneath. Krueger too is fairly certain it was a tornado that ravaged his livelihood.

Was It A Tornado?

A meteorologist with Environment Canada says it was probably straight-line winds and not a tornado that caused all the damage Monday in southern Manitoba.

Considering the extent of the scarring to all three properties, it seems odd that other lots in the area remained totally unperturbed.

Indeed, looking at the landscape only a short two-minute drive back into the hamlet of Tolstoi itself, one would hardly expect anything was wrong.

Nevertheless, for Krueger, Funk, Sawatzky, and roughly a half dozen other nearby property owners, the next few days will consist of cleanup and repairs whether the weather office calls it a twister or not.