The Senior Climatologist for Environment Canada says May was a remarkable month for weather.
David Phillips says it is quite possible that the 35.9 degrees that was recorded one day last month in Steinbach, will go down as the hottest day of the year. And believe it or not, that happened in the first half of the month, on May 13th.
May produced five days of at least 30 degrees in Steinbach. Phillips says on average, Steinbach sees fewer than one of those annually in May.
Environment Canada uses the meteorological calendar when determining its seasons. Based on that, spring runs from March 1st to May 31st. Phillips says the average temperature for those three months ended up being 1.7 degrees warmer than normal.
When you look at the month of May alone, Phillips says the average daytime high was 23.0 degrees. The normal daytime high for May is 18.7 degrees. That means the average daytime high last month was 4.3 degrees warmer than normal. He notes our overnight temperature was about 2.2 degrees above normal.
Overall, the average temperature last month was 14.7 degrees, when the normal is 11.5 degrees.
Going back to May 13th, Phillips says historically, the normal high for May 13th is 21 degrees, which means the temperature this year was nearly 15 degrees warmer than normal.
"And I'm going to guess that you may not see a temperature as warm as 36 degrees for the rest of the summer," he predicts.
In fact, he says the hottest day in Steinbach in all of 2024 was 32.7 degrees.
But Phillips says the real shocker last month came four days later after that scorching hot day, when the overnight temperature on May 17th dipped to 0.6 degrees.
"So, it was almost as if summer arrived and now you were back into more of an early spring or a mild winter mode," he says.
When you look at precipitation, Phillips says for a month like last month, ideally you then want above-normal rainfall. However, he says that was not the case. Phillips says Steinbach received about 40 millimetres (mm) of rain, which is below the normal for May of 69 mm. There were eight days of rain, instead of the normal 11.
"In fact, 90 per cent of that 40 mm of rain occurred in those three days on the 15th, 16th, and 17th," he points out.
Phillips says the entire spring season saw below-average precipitation. He notes Steinbach received about 64 mm of precipitation, down from the normal 122 mm.