Wet weekend ahead for Ontario and Quebec

Southwestern Quebec, along with southern Ontario, continues to be exceptionally dry. The Environment Canada map above shows that some areas had as much as 75 to 90 percent less precipitation than normal for June 2016.

We need the rain. That being said, the timing is less than perfect with the weekend approaching. Montreal continues to run at a significant deficit as far as precipitation is concerned. Officially, only 6.6mm of rain has fallen in Montreal for July. This follows a very dry spring with precipitation amounts running at 25 to 50 percent of the normal in southwestern Quebec. The effects of the limited rainfall can be seen on lawns all over the region. Additionally, water levels are very low on area lakes and rivers. As well several trees are beginning to lose leaves, a sure sign of loss of water and heat stress. The only saving grace has been the cooler nights. It has been an odd summer so far. As far as high temperatures go, Montreal has already reached 30C (86F) or higher on 8 occasions in 2016. We managed this only 11 times during the entire summer of 2015. The heat however has been punctuated by days of very cold weather for summer in Montreal. On Thursday, a weak frontal boundary, located just south of Montreal, resulted in the city having light northeast winds and a high of only 25C (77F). Areas just off-island to the south and west of the city were in the upper 20s, even into the low 30s in some cases. Strong thunderstorms affected northeast New York and northern Vermont, with hail, downed trees and power outages during the afternoon and evening.

That brings us to this weekend. Multiple areas of low pressure will impact Ontario and Quebec, as they slowly move northeast into Atlantic Canada. After a partly cloudy and humid Friday, with a high near 26C (79F), clouds will be on the increase tonight. Showers and thunderstorms will develop overnight and continue intermittently on Saturday. Gusty winds up to 50km/h will help keep temperatures cooler Saturday and Sunday, around 20C (68F) in Montreal. The weekend rainfall is expected to drop 25-35mm (1 to 1.5 inches) on the region. On Monday, skies will slowly clear out. We are expecting a return to very warm and increasingly humid weather by early next week, with high temperatures once again approaching 30C.