Elie, MB – Children played games and chowed down on hot dogs and hamburgers as bright sunshine and warm temperatures provided a placid backdrop for a family cookout held outside the Blessed Sacrament Church. The calm blue sky above offered no trace of the rage and raw fury it inflicted upon the residents of Elie just over two weeks ago.

On Friday, June 23, vicious thunderstorms spawned at least two tornadoes in the area, with one packing destructive winds of nearly 400 km per hour. The powerful twister chewed its way through a flour mill on the outskirts of town, then made a direct hit on four homes, turning them to splinters and leaving families shattered.

Officially, Environment Canada called the tornado an F4, “as bad as it gets” in this country.

Mike Nwosu, Pastor of the Blessed Sacrament Church and one-year resident of Elie, calls it a miracle.

“We held a celebration of Thanksgiving,” Nwosu said, “for the lives that were spared here that day. It was God’s will that no one perished in that storm, and for that we are thankful.”

The degree of destruction in the tornado’s path, and the debris that still hangs like surreal ornaments in nearby trees, betrays the idea that families escaped with their lives from obliterated homes. Automobiles thrown by the horrific winds lay crumpled in fields, and trees stripped of their branches still bow to the winds that disappeared as quickly as they came when the storm moved on.

But the little town’s community spirit, and its will to recover is not as easily swayed and broken. “The day after (the tornado), we must have had a thousand people out, moving through each yard to remove every piece of debris,” said Kim Howard. “Everyone came out to begin removing any trace of what happened here.”

Evidence of ongoing cleanup operations are evident as a tractor pulls a plow through soil where houses once stood, removing chunks of debris that may be hazardous to scores of volunteers who have descended on the area to begin rebuilding homes for families they consider to be their own.

The tornado that touched down at Elie was unusually intense for southern Manitoba, and was part of a complex of severe thunderstorms that formed in an environment of high dewpoint temperatures ahead of a low pressure system in the early evening hours. Warm temperatures aloft acted as a “cap”, suppressing storm development for most of the day, but a lake breeze boundary sparked development of thunderstorms that rapidly grew severe.

“The sky was clear, then suddenly a lot of rain came out of nowhere,” Howard said. “I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner when I saw it through the window. It was the biggest storm I’ve ever seen.”

While the town goes about the business of repairing or replacing what they can in the wake of the storm, the memory of its destructive power will leave an impression on those it affected for a long time to come.

“Every time a strong wind blows, we pray it won’t be another tornado,” Pastor Nwosu said. “People were deeply affected by this, and it will take them some time to get over it.”

Twenty years ago today, at just before three o’clock Friday afternoon a phone call to Edmonton’s weather office warned of a tornado sighting just south of Edmonton at Leduc, the beginnings of a mammoth storm that would produce Canada’s second deadliest tornado in history.

At 3:25 PM, the tornado slammed into the southeast Edmonton community of Mill Woods at F2 strength, intensifying as it began shredding entire neighborhoods. By the time it reached Refinery Row, it was producing F4 damage and had claimed 12 lives. The monster storm wasn’t through yet, flexing its muscles as it obliterated homes in the Evergreen Trailer Park, killing 15 of its residents.

By the time the tornado dissipated at 4:25 pm, over 300 homes and other property had been left in ruins, with damage totals exceeding $300 million.