Heavy rain wreaks havoc on N.S. highways
Posted Jun 2, 2010 05:54:17 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The month of June got off to a wet start, thanks to heavy rain that caused chaos on provincial highways.
There were more than a dozen collisions on the province’s highways during Tuesday’s afternoon rush.
Of the 19 crashes reported on provincial highways, the Herald reports 14 occurred between 4 and 7pm.
Paul Maynard of EHS says it was very unusual – and compared it to what typically happens during the first snowfall of the year.
Meterologist Richard Zurawski says we got between 30 and 50mm of rain on the first day of June – after a very dry May.
“We only got about a third to a half of the normal amount of rain that we were supposed to get,” he said. “And in a given month, we get about 100mm to 120mm of rain.”
May only recorded 47.7 mm of rain, according to Environment Canada, and June 1 in 2009 recorded just 6mm of precipitation.
Zurawski says Tuesday’s downpour wasn’t unexpected, but it was surprisingly dramatic.
“It was very heavy at times,” he said. “I think we were getting a few millimetres a minute at one point.”
The weather’s has been kind of wacky all over the place for the last week. While south-western Ontario has dealt with hail, temperatures hit 30 degrees in Nunavut – and Calgary residents had to get out the snow shovels. There’s also been record rainfalls in parts of Saskatchewan.
The freak weather occurrences are blamed on a series of atmospheric oddities.
