During Monday’s severe thunderstorm which tore through the region, many Winkler residents reported seeing a large flash of lightning, followed by a house shaking boom. This morning PembinaValleyOnline found out where the strike hit.

“I’m sure Monday afternoon everyone in Winkler heard this huge bang, and we found out it hit our eighty foot cottonwood tree in our backyard on 3rd Street South,” explained Darrell Wiebe who made the discovery Wednesday. “Wow, did it do a number on that, and everything around there.”

Wiebe was not home at the time of the lightning strike, but his neighbours were, and they’ve told him they saw a huge orange fire ball. The accompanying crack of thunder was so loud and deep it shook hanging pictures off the walls of neighbour’s homes as well as Wiebe’s.

“There’s dirt sprayed onto the fence where it (struck), and the grass is singed along the root line of the big tree, too”.

Wiebe says some of the electronics in their home were damaged by the strike, adding a neighbour's home had a branch from the tree, which is about twenty feet away, puncture their roof.

Meanwhile, CMOS Accredited Weathercaster Chris Sumner says the risk of severe thunderstorm activity will return to the region Friday afternoon and evening with a hot and humid air-mass being pumped into the region throughout the day by relatively strong southerly winds.

“An approaching low pressure system from the west, and the accompanying cold front, will be the trigger for storm development,” explains Sumner. “Due to the moisture rich environment the cold front will be ploughing into, heavy rainfall will be a risk, as well as severe wind gusts. There may also be a slight risk for tornadoes, but that will be contingent on individual supercells developing and maintaining, which at this point, is still uncertain for the Pembina Valley.”