If you’ve been thinking the summer has been off to an especially wet start in Nova Scotia this year, it’s not just you.
After a relatively dry spring – which contributed to the historic wildfires seen a few weeks ago – about 214 millimetres of rain fell in the Halifax area in June, almost double what fell in the previous three months combined.
The rainiest day was June 5, which saw 50 millimetres of rain, followed by June 25, which saw 36.
Many parts of Nova Scotia have been shrouded in fog and drizzle for the last couple of weeks, during a time of the year that is typically bright and summery.
Jill Maepea, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said it was the third-rainiest June on record in the Halifax area, with the current record being 305 millimetres in June 1985.
Further south, it was also the rainiest June on record in the Kejimkujik area, which saw a whopping 345 millimetres of rain last month.
According to historical data from Environment Canada, June was the rainiest month in Halifax since October 2016, when about 218 millimetres of rain fell – though Maepea cautioned against comparing different months.
“We know the fall is generally wetter, so we wouldn’t want to compare a June with an October,” she explained.
Maepea said the wet weather is due to a series of “blocking patterns” in the atmosphere.
“We have a continuous, almost southwesterly moist-warm air mass that has been stagnant, and it’s not really going anywhere,” she said.
“We’ll get a few weakened periods where we get some sunshine, but then it just reestablishes itself.”
The rainy weather is also partially due to the Bermuda High – a large area of high pressure off the Atlantic coast – which is “not really budging all that much.”
“It’s just a matter of high pressure systems and low pressure systems that we’re seeing, and they’re just not moving as much as they normally would in the northern hemisphere,” said Maepea.
“It happens all the time – it can happen any time of year – it’s just sometimes you happen to be on the worst side of it, which we are.”
She said there is no correlation between the province’s relatively dry spring and the weather we’re seeing now.
“In retrospect, it is good that it’s raining a lot in June because of the wildfires and just overall water situation in the ground,” said Maepea.
“So there’s really no exact explanation for it, but maybe Mother Nature has some plans for us.”
Here comes the sun?
So when will Halifax get to see the sun again?
“Unfortunately, this pattern is still interested in just hanging out over all the Maritimes,” Maepea said, explaining there is similar weather also happening in New Brunswick and P.E.I.
Environment Canada is forecasting a mix of sun and clouds on Thursday and a high of 28 C, and a sunny day on Friday with a high of 32 C.
Saturday is expected to be a mix of sun and cloud and a high of 27, though it’s expected to cloud over again in the evening, bringing a chance of showers once again.
“We are anticipating a little bit more sun towards the end of this week for a couple of days,” Maepea said.
“But after that, it looks like, again, we’re still in that southerly-southwesterly flow, which for us just kind of brings a lot of clouds, showers, and drizzle and such.”
Maepea said conditions aren’t expected to change much for the first half of July, but time will tell what the rest of the month will look like.
“A nice sunny day would be appreciated by a lot of people at this point,” she said.
Comments