Manitoba Premier Gary Doer toured the town of Elie west of Winnipeg Saturday where a tornado hit hard the night before.
The tornado destroyed at least four homes and damaged several others, but there were no reports of injuries.
It also tossed several trucks into fields and caused a semi to roll into the ditch on the Trans-Canada Highway.
Environment Canada said the storm was more than likely a violent F4 tornado.
A preliminary assessment Saturday by meteorologists at Elie shows that wind speeds would have reached between 331 and 417 kilometres.
Tornadoes are categorized on what is known as the Fujita scale, which rates their severity based on the damage they cause. F4 and F5 tornadoes are the most violent. Winds in the F4 range can level well-constructed houses and structures, cars and other large objects some distance.
Eye witness accounts of the tornado in the Eli area suggest it was on the ground for about 30 to 40 minutes and travelled a distance of about 5.5 kilometres.
Thunderstorms are forecast for the area again Saturday after a day-time high expected to be around 30 C.
"There have been sightings all around of tornadoes and funnel clouds, but (the town of) Elie appears to be the hardest hit at this point," said RCMP Cpl. Chris Ballard.
In Elie, a town of about 1,100 about 35 kilometres west of Winnipeg, at least four homes were destroyed and several others damaged, said Paul White, an official with the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization.
"I've been down that street hundreds of times and I took a walk down it after (the tornado)," said Ryan Marcotte, who lives in Elie.
"I covered my mouth. I was in awe."
RCMP warned people to stay away from the destruction zone in Elie, where power was shut off Friday night to reduce the risk from the potentially explosive combination of downed power lines and ruptured natural gas pipes.
Environment Canada meteorologist David Wray said the weather office received three reports of tornadoes touching down on Friday night - one west of Portage La Prairie, another in Elie, and a third in the Carman area.
Kyle Picard of St. Eustache, Man., was driving on the Trans-Canada Highway at the time with his children, aged four and eight.
"They were a little hysterical that the hydro lines were snapping and sparks were flying through the air. The kids were screaming, 'We're going to die!' "
The storm also damaged several vehicles and tossed semis like toys into the ditch off the Trans-Canada Highway.
"There were trucks in the middle of the field. There was a semi rolled over in the ditch. The wind just blew it over," said Paul Martens as he described travelling into Elie shortly after the tornado swirled around his own home just outside town.
Mr. Marcotte said at first, the tornado that hit Elie wasn't all that big. But after following it around in his car for a while, he said he decided he'd better start warning people to get inside.
"It picked up and it got real big real fast," said Mr. Marcotte. "Debris started flying around and there was real big hail."
"Then it just disappeared. The sun came out and there was a rainbow."
Rob Waldner lives at nearby Hutterite colony. He watched the funnel cloud from beginning to end.
"It's pretty amazing. It was devastating. It was just a skinny little thing and then it came down and it must have been a quarter mile wide. Unbelievable."
Wayne Hanna, who was also driving east on the Trans-Canada, said the tornado did not look like he expected after seeing twisters in movies.
"It was sort of like a sword on an angle."
He watched it cross the highway, then drove quickly past. "You could feel the wind."
In the Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie, about 13 kilometres south of Oakville, a tornado ripped through a farmyard. The house sustained minor damage, according to RCMP, but a Quonset was destroyed and farm machinery was damaged.
Adam Pankhurst was returning home from a business trip in Saskatchewan and had just left Portage la Prairie when he saw a funnel cloud forming to the east. He began to take photos of it while driving.
"As I got closer and closer, everyone was pulling over to the side of the highway. When it was about 100 yards to my right, my car was lifting and shaking," he said.
Mr. Pankhurst said he hit the accelerator, but was unable to drive faster than 100 kilometres an hour.
"It felt like my car was being sucked into it."
Mr. Wray said a team from Environment Canada will go to Elie in the next few days to determine whether it was a tornado that caused the damage in the town.
"Based on the damage or whatever other evidence there is we can tell how big they were or if they actually touched down. We have funnel cloud situations where the funnel will extend a good 75 per cent or 80 per cent of the way down so it will look like a tornado on the ground but in fact it was just a funnel cloud ..."