July 2016 into the history books

This tornado south of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, destroyed one home on Sunday afternoon. (Twitter Photo @katielyn_213)

My favorite month of the year is over, sadly. July in Montreal lived up to expectations as the warmest and most humid month of the year. This July featured lots of sunshine and below-normal precipitation. The rain that did fall was associated with thunderstorms, and thus highly variable across southern Quebec. Officially at Trudeau Airport, 74.2mm of rain fell, below the normal of 89.3mm. I recorded 79mm here on L'Ile Perrot, but almost half of that fell in one thunderstorm. As far as temperatures go, it was warm, with an average daily high of 27.2C (81F), above the long-term average of 26.3C (79F). The average overnight low for the month was 16.8C (63F), also above the normal of 16.1C (61F). The warmest high temperature was 33.7C (93F) at Trudeau, 35C (95F) here on L'Ile Perrot. We managed six days above 30C, with another four days very close, above 29C.

August has started off the same way. This week is expected to be warm, with increasing humidity. High temperatures will be from 28C to 32C (83 to 90F) as the week progresses. A strong cold front will arrive by late Friday, with showers and thunderstorms. At this time, the weekend looks less humid and slightly cooler. Some of you may have noticed a few trees dropping their leaves. This is very early, and likely caused by the very warm and dry July. Heat stress on trees will often manifest itself that way. That being said, we will start to loose daylight rapidly this month, increasing the leaf-shedding process naturally as we head into September.

TORNADO
We had another weekend of severe weather across many portions of North America. Most notable were the two strong tornadoes that occurred between Yorkton and Melville in Saskatchewan on Sunday. Thankfully, no injuries were reported, but widespread damage did occur. One home and farm was completely destroyed. Along the east coast of the United States, the story was flooding. Over 150mm of rain in less than two hours sent torrents of water rushing through Ellicott City, Maryland. The historic town, west of Baltimore, was left in ruins, with two fatalities reported.