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Waterloo experienced record-breaking rainfall in January: UW Weather Station

The University of Waterloo Weather Station says January was a record-setting month for the region's rainfall. Ahmad Fareed Khan / Global News

The wild weather Waterloo Region experienced in January proved to record-breaking, according to University of Waterloo Weather Station co-ordinator Frank Seglenieks.

On Jan. 11, the region was hit by torrential rains, which the weather station recorded as 79.6 millimetres.

Seglenieks says this was a new record for January that almost doubled the previous record, when 43 millimetres of rain fell on the area on Jan. 15, 1995.

It was also the largest single-day downpour in Waterloo in nearly three decades, as the region last saw a downpour close to that size when 82 millimetres of rain fell on July 7, 1991.

Click to play video: 'Storms brings flooding, freezing rain to central and southern Ontario'
Storms brings flooding, freezing rain to central and southern Ontario

But even without the downpour on Jan. 11, the rest of the month put January’s total rainfall well above average, Seglenieks says.

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In total, Waterloo was drenched with 154.7 millimetres of precipitation in January, well above the previous record-setting total of 134.9 millimetres in 1929.

While Waterloo was wet last month, it was also warm.

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The average daily temperature finished slightly above zero — 0.8 C — which works out to being about four degrees above average.

In fact, Seglenieks says it was the sixth warmest January in the region in the past 100 years.

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