The Rain on the Plain

There are only two things farmers complain about^†: too much rain, and not enough rain.

For most of 2016, it was the latter that caught our attention, culminating of course in the Fort Mac forest fires that gained international attention (and retarded analysis by global warming fanatacists).

However, right on cue for May Long Weekend (which is almost as reliable a bad-weather predictor as Klondike Days is) the skies above Alberta opened up and gave a heavy dump of rain, ruining camping trips (doubly so, if you went camping in Leduc county) and giving parched lawns and forests a much-needed dose of rain. Farmers are mostly happy about it too: the thing about complaining about too much rain is when it happens at the absolute wrong time, like 24 hours after you've cut the hay crop. Right after you plant is much better.

^† Pre Rachel Arab's sick anti-farmer government, of course

Rainfall varies a lot, of course: out at Lac St. Anne they apparently got a mere 25-40mm of rain this weekend. Edson and Grande Prairie got Friday morning snowfall, and sadly Fort McMurray itself got a mere 5mm.

As for Edmonton, we got 76.5mm of rain^‡ between May 19th and May 23rd, with most of it falling on the even numbered days and smaller amounts on the odd numbered days^§. That's a pretty big chunk of rainfall, you might be thinking, and you're right.

Edmonton's total avergage annual precipitation is 476.9mm (365.7mm of rain plus 123.5cm of snow), which means that over four days Edmonton received a whopping 16% of our total annual precipitation over that span. That also represents an astounding 21% of our total annual rainfall. More to come, too, as the forecast calls for more rainshowers into Memorial Day Weekend. By contrast, the entire precipitation for the month of April was 9.9mm, and 14.1mm in March.

^‡ This again is very location-dependent: southwest Edmonton got more rain than northeast Edmonton did

^§ The May Long 2016 rainfall, therefore, follows the same rule as Star Trek movies

Almost literally switching between feast and famine, the Capital Region is finally swimming in rainfall, and the crops and gardens and lawns and parks are finally going to grow like they were supposed to, just as soon as we start getting actual nice weather again. Just in case you worried we'd run out of things to complain about, this rain is just at the right time to provide a huge boon in the mosquito population.

We probably won't need any rain for a while now. Just in time, come to think of it, for Klondike Days.