To the chagrin of some farmers in the Weyburn area, record-setting rainfalls have come in the past week, accompanied by intense thunderstorms. Last Wednesday, 33 millimetres fell during a storm, setting a new record for August 21st. Then, early Saturday morning, another 30 millimetres fell in another storm, setting a record for August 24th. The records, though, aren’t too big of a surprise said Terri Lang, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“We usually don’t look at those as being all that significant, because all it takes is one thunderstorm to break a daily rainfall record,” the meteorologist said. “What we look at more is the monthly – if they’ve broken a monthly rainfall record for the day.”
The most rain ever seen on one day in August is 55.9 millimetres, which fell on August 6th, 1990.
The rain on the weekend did bring the total amount of rain seen in Weyburn for August to 91.9 millimetres. While this is well above the 30-year average of 47.5 millimetres, it is well below the record which was set back in 2010, when August saw 167.8 millimetres fall.
One characteristic of the storms that came through over the past week was the lightning. There were some reports of up to 20 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per minute across all of southeast Saskatchewan during the peak of the storm that came through early Sunday morning.
“For every lightning strike that goes from the cloud to the ground in a regular thunderstorm, there’s about three or four in-cloud or cloud-to-cloud strikes,” Lang said. “But in these types of storms, when they’re very energetic, and they’re moving fast, and they’re being sustained through the night, you can get as high as 20 cloud-to-cloud, or in-cloud, lightning strikes compared to every cloud-to-ground strike.”
High winds also accompanied the storm. The peak wind gust recorded at the Weyburn airport was just over 60 kilometres per hour, and the top windspeed in the province Sunday morning was in Broadview, where the wind reached just over 100 kilometres an hour.
“We know that the winds were stronger, just from the damage reports that we received, but if we don’t have a weather station recording them, then we don’t know what the wind speeds are,” Lang explained.
There is the possibility of more precipitation later in the week, with a chance of showers on Wednesday and Thursday. Aside from that, however, it appears the month of August will be relatively warm, and sunny. You can stay up to date with the latest forecast by checking the Discover Weyburn Weather page.