Environment and Climate Change Canada's senior meteorologist released his top ten weather stories of the year earlier this week with our province's wet spring finishing #3 overall.
David Phillips says it caused a lot of unexpected problems for a lot of different people.
"It was a drenching spring, but it was more than that. It, first of all, began with really heavy amounts of snow in southern Manitoba. I think, overall in southern Manitoba, it was about the third snowiest winter on record," says Phillips. "The flood forecasters were not so nervous with that, because I think the ground was not quite as frozen as it would have been maybe the previous fall. Soil moisture was slow to come, but the snow stayed. You had ended up with, kind of a coolish kind of spring, but then you got this parade of Colorado lows."
Phillips says the Colorado low systems do not always affect Manitoba, but sometimes, when the system hooks northward, it can cause major problems. For example, it was a storm from a Colorado low in 1997 which caused the Flood of the Century.
In 2022, we didn't see one major storm, but we did have eight weeks of wet weather and moisture which caused, what he calls, 'Flood Fatigue'. He says all rivers saw flooding this spring from one corner of the province to the other.
"It was just too much and there were, I think, 45 municipalities that declared states of emergency. Nine First Nations communities were just too much underwater," says Phillips. "People were bailing and bagging and manning water pumps and everything just seemed to close down. Provincial parks closed down, campgrounds, hiking trails. Farmers couldn't get onto the land to plow and plant."
He adds it was a completely different story the previous two years when we had two of the driest years ever.
Thu, Apr 25, 5:00 PM
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