Heavy rain and hail were reported over Westman on Wednesday night and early Thursday as low pressure came into the province from North Dakota and triggered thunderstorms.

Environment and Climate Change meteorologist Crawford Luke told the Sun that reports of tennis-ball-sized hail were made in Inglis, and more than 100 millimetres of rain fell in Portage la Prairie.

The storm ignited as conditions had been piling up for some time, Luke said.

“We’ve had a lot of humidity just kind of building up over the area for several days now — a lot of moisture building up — and that’s the ingredient we need for thunderstorms,” Luke said Thursday.

“We had this really humid air mass, a really unstable air mass in place, and we kind of just needed a trigger to set things off.”

The trigger was a low

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