Patrick Ayotte took this photo of the funnel cloud touching down while standing on a dike in St. Jean Baptiste, Man., facing southwest. (Submitted by Jacquie Ayotte)

Manitoba's first tornado of the season has rekindled concerns about the province's lack of an advance warning system during weather emergencies.

No one was injured and no damage was reported after a tornado touched down in southeastern Manitoba around 4:30 p.m. CT Sunday afternoon.

"Well, I was watching TV and I heard a crack, and then I looked outside and [saw] a big pile of dust, and it went across the road here," said Gerard Vissonnette, who lives just west of the intersection of highways 75 and 14.

'It was about a quarter mile wide and quite high in the air."

Jeff Burnard was driving with his family near the same intersection when he also saw the funnel come down from the storm clouds and tear up a field.

Burnard said the visuals reminded him of a tornado that struck Edmonton when he was there in 1987; that twister killed 27 people and injured 300 others.

"That's what made me think of it, is that experience in Edmonton," he said. "I even told my wife and the boys: 'Could someone please keep a look out the sunroof, because this is really tornado weather going on here.'"

Burnard pulled to the side of the road when the storm picked up speed. He said it appeared other fingers were coming down from the clouds near the first tornado he spotted.

No advance warning of twister

Environment Canada issued a tornado warning at 4:43 p.m., about 10 minutes after it first received reports of the funnel cloud touching down. Severe thunderstorm and tornado watches and warnings were then issued for parts of southeastern Manitoba during the evening.

The lack of advance warning is making some Manitobans nervous, especially after a twister in Elie, Man., last summer that was the strongest-rated tornado in Canadian history. No tornado warnings were issued before that twister, either.

As the system currently works in Manitoba, weather watchers call in tornado spottings to Environment Canada, which first sends out a message over weather radio, then to the media, said Jay Anderson, a forecaster with the federal weather agency for three decades who now teaches at the University of Manitoba.

But few people own weather radios, Anderson said, and most don't keep them on.

Provincial officials say the government is continuing to work with Ottawa on a national warning system. Anderson said that discussion may well be underway, but in the meantime, Manitobans are left in the lurch.

"It's really just time to get off the pot and do something," he said. "It can be done if the threat level is perceived as being high enough. If the province wants it, the province can have it, because the Alberta government's arrangement has shown that it can work."

The Alberta government can interrupt radio and television broadcasts if a tornado warning comes in. The province brought in the system in the wake of 1987's deadly tornado.

"What would get it in Manitoba? I kind of hate to say that, but maybe hitting Winnipeg with an F3 scale tornado would do it," Anderson said.

Same storm blamed for death in Minnesota

No damage has been reported as a result of the tornado in Manitoba, but the same weather system brought devastation to the small city of Hugo, north of Minneapolis, later on Sunday.

A tornado hit Hugo around 5:30 p.m. CT, killing a child and destroying 50 homes, with 200 others damaged.

Hugo city manager Mike Ericson said the twister struck an area of recent development.

"It was very scary for the residents. They were standing in front of their yards, on their sidewalks, on the trails, pretty much in disbelief," he said. "Some of them just can't believe what had hit."

The tornado siren did go off in the city of 12,000, which gave many residents the warning they needed to take shelter and protect themselves, Ericson said.

"The individuals heard it and scrambled for safety in their basements," he said.

"In the case of our public works director, he literally covered his two-year-old girl and wife with a blanket as the storm hit, and it lifted the home up and threw it off. And [they] survived it."