Main Street in Niverville

The southeast was hit hard by tremendous rainfall Friday morning, causing flash flooding in Steinbach and Niverville.

Environment Canada Meteorologist Rob Paula says the storm was caused by a cold front meeting with high humidity, creating a lot of moisture.

"In that storm we saw rainfall amounts of 50 to 70 millimetres falling within an hour, which is a tremendous amount of rain to occur in such a short period of time," Paula explains.  "There were isolated reports of 95 to 120 millimetres of rain in the Domain and Niverville areas."

The sudden and fierce downpour wasn't the first deluge to flood Steinbach this year, and Paula notes the system was very similar to a storm that caused flash flooding in Winnipeg on August 21st.

"These events are not that unusual," Paula describes.  "What's unusual is when it hits one particular location like a city, it has tremendous impacts.  But on the whole over the prairies, it's not that unusual for some of these storms to pop up and give heavy rainfall rates over short distances."

The storm system had the largest impact in Niverville, where numerous basements flooded.