Winnipeg could see wettest year on record after Monday storm boosts rainfall numbers

Southern Manitoba was hit hard by a storm Monday night, with a significant amount of water falling on the region, even by 2022’s wetter-than-usual standards.

According to Environment Canada, a number of areas in Winnipeg were walloped by rain — notably Transcona, which saw 114 millimetres, East Kildonan at 96 millimetres, and the Forks at 90 millimetres.

Meteorologist Scott Kehler of Weatherlogics told 680 CJOB that we’re currently on pace for Winnipeg’s wettest year ever — even if the rest of 2022 sees an average level of precipitation.

“At the Winnipeg airport, there’s been 600 millimetres so far this year,” Kehler said.

“For the rest of this year, normal precipitation would be about 172 millimetres, so if you add that to the 600, that would be 772 millimetres — if we have normal (rainfall) for the rest of the year.

“The record wettest year was 723 millimetres in 1962.”

Kehler said the region could be entering a wet cycle for the next number of years, based on the amount of rainfall Manitobans have seen so far.

“On the prairies we tend to get locked into what we call wet or dry cycles,” he said. “The past 10 or so years, up until this year, have been a dry cycle, so we had a lot of really dry years.

“If you remember back to the early 2000s, we had a lot of very wet years. So what I’m watching for now is whether we’ve finally switched out of that dry cycle back to a wetter one.”

Monday’s storm was also marked by tornado warnings, although there were no reports of any twisters actually materializing.

Kehler said Manitoba’s severe weather/tornado season is, thankfully, on the wind down.

“Somtimes it does last to September but typically August is the last really busy month,” he said.

“With the humidity we’ve had this year, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if the season lingered a little bit longer than normal, and (last night’s storm) is an indication of that.”

1:23 Stormy weather spells trouble for Manitoba crops