Residents in southeastern Saskatchewan are being advised to keep an eye on the sky Monday evening as another round of severe weather is in the forecast, following a weekend that brought intense lightning and heavy downpours to the region.
The stormy weather kicked off Friday with what many locals described as a continuous roll of thunder. According to Christy Climenhaga, a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, the system was electrically charged.
"We track the number of flashes either intercloud, so cloud to cloud, or cloud to ground, and just looking at the numbers from Friday, you saw over 35,000 flashes, which is more than any single day you saw in July and June," Climenhaga said.
The slow-moving thunderstorms also brought significant rainfall, though totals varied widely across the region. Over the weekend, Estevan received between 65 and 70 millimetres, while the official station at the Weyburn airport recorded 15 millimetres.
However, Climenhaga noted that unofficial reports from some areas in the southeast, such as near Midale and Fort Qu'Appelle, topped 100 millimetres.
"A lot of variation in the region," she said, explaining the discrepancy many residents observed between official numbers and their own rain gauges.
The active weather is being fueled by an unusual amount of moisture for this time of year.
"We have very uncommonly high dew points; we would generally see these sorts of dew points in the heat of the summer as opposed to in September," Climenhaga stated. This humidity is also keeping overnight temperatures much warmer than the seasonal average.
The conditions are ripe for more severe weather on Monday.
"It looks like tonight we could see some more severe weather into the southeastern part of the province with storms that could bring heavy downpours once again, large hail, strong winds, even the chance of some funnel cloud development," said Climenhaga.
She added that the environment is right for rotation, which can lead to the formation of weak, landspout tornadoes. While rare for mid-September, Climenhaga said it's not unprecedented, pointing to a tornado that touched down near Langbank on September 18th of last year.
The forecast shows a trend towards drier, quieter weather moving in for the end of the week.