Yesterday, Environment Canada was forecasting a big thunderstorm, but most people in the southeast ended up dry, with no thunderstorm in sight. Usually, that's a case of thunderstorms tending to be tightly packed and missing areas, but in the case of Wednesday's weather, it was completely missing from most of the southeast.
Crawford Luke, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, says at least one area did see a bit of rain.
"More of a not-formed versus a near miss. It looks like we did get one thunderstorm yesterday. It was kind of between Regina and Melville, which I know is still quite a ways north, but otherwise everything was quite a bit west of the region, kind of towards Swift Current and Val Marie-type area. Later in the evening, they did eventually make their way to Regina before everything kind of fizzled out, but yeah, nothing really ever got super close to the Estevan area."
Luke explains that a thunderstorm not appearing in an area is something that they need to watch out for, as their data can be difficult to work with.
"It can be a little tricky sometimes. It really depends on the setup. Sometimes we have dry air or warm temperatures higher up in the atmosphere that can limit thunderstorm production. So we have a lot of weather stations at the surface where we live."
"We don't necessarily have a lot of data above the surface that we can rely on for that kind of stuff. So it can make it tricky sometimes, and perhaps that's what we saw yesterday."
Regardless of why the thunderstorm didn't appear in the southeast yesterday, it's back in the forecast today, with more rain and thunder being called for.
Luke says we should keep an eye out, as this system is a bit more likely to hit.
"I think today's probably looks like a higher chance for the southeast in general compared to yesterday. I still think they're going to form to the west, so they might form kind of closer to that Moose Jaw down to Assiniboia area, and then they'll track east from there."
Luke expects that to hit us later in the evening, with the Weyburn and Estevan area seeing a decent chance.
Any system that does come through will likely have some of the same extreme conditions as were reported yesterday.
"Definitely looks like a pretty good chance for some large hail with some of the stronger storms today. So right now, we're actually anticipating some hail potentially up to 5 centimetres in diameter with the stronger storms. That would be about the size of a chicken egg or a golf ball. So, pretty substantial hail. Could also be some strong damaging winds with those stronger storms as well, potentially gusting over 100, 110 kilometres an hour."
Luke also reports a potential tornado risk as they could hit the southeast just a week after the last tornadoes.