While many of us don't pay a lot of attention to the amount of rain that falls, it wasn't too difficult to notice that October was a dry month in Portage la Prairie. In fact, rain only fell on three of the 31 days, and two of those times it was a small amount.
While it is not normally a month that sees a lot of precipitation, it is surprising to hear more rain fell on Sunday into Monday than what we had seen for all of October. Meteorologist Brian Picton with Environment Canada says it may seem odd, but that is in fact true, and it was more than triple.
"When I look in the Portage area, we're seeing many stations reporting around 25 millimeters. If you go a little bit further to the west of the city though, the amounts start to fall off fairly significantly. In the Brandon area that amount was 5 to 10 millimeters. So it was fairly concentrated over the Red River Valley more than anywhere else. We reported 8.1 millimeters for the month of October at Southport so 25 in Portage was easily more than the entire month."
Picton also shared some of the normal October stats.
"An average October would have about 37 millimeters of precipitation, so we were less than 25% of that. It was the 17th driest October in 127 years of recording for the Portage area. A very dry month for sure but we managed to turn that around a little bit with the rain we've had."
Picton commented that the only snow that fell in the province was much further to the north and said some flurries may be coming this week to parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The weather forecaster noted though that nothing is expected in Manitoba between now and Remembrance Day. Picton also mentioned that colder than normal weather is still expected over the winter months and when it eventually arrives, it may come quickly.
"I think it will be a fairly significant shock to people's system when we see it, yes."
Environment Canada rainfall totals from the area from Sunday and Monday
- Altona - 35.8mm
- Cartwright - 32.9mm
- Baldur - 32.7mm
- Bagot - 29.9mm
- Amaranth - 29.7mm
- Teulon - 29.6mm
- Arborg - 29.6mm
- Morris - 29.1mm
- Carman - 28.1mm
- St. Adolphe - 27.0mm
- Holland - 25.8mm
- Portage la Prairie - 22.3mm
- Gladstone - 21.6mm
- Killartney - 21.2mm
- Elm Creek - 20.6mm
- Glenboro - 20.3mm
- Brandon - 7.8mm