{"id":108648,"date":"2025-08-30T23:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T23:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108648\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T23:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T23:25:11","slug":"ottawa-sees-wettest-day-of-2025-but-drought-effects-should-linger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108648\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa sees wettest day of 2025, but drought effects should linger"},"content":{"rendered":"

After weeks of parched conditions, Ottawans finally had to haul out their rain gear and their umbrellas this week.<\/p>\n

The city got hit with 34.6 millimetres of rain Thursday, making it the wettest day of the year, according to Environment Canada data recorded at the airport.<\/p>\n

In one day, Ottawa got nearly three times as much rain as had fallen in all of August up to that point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What’s more, Thursday’s rainfall\u00a0now counts for roughly a quarter of all the rain that’s come down in the nation’s capital\u00a0this summer.<\/p>\n

That makes it the eighth\u00a0driest summer since Environment Canada began keeping records at the airport in 1939, said meteorologist Steven Flisfeder.<\/p>\n

“You might get a bit more [rain] before the month is out,” Flisfeder said Friday. “But that will\u00a0be a drop in the bucket.”<\/p>\n

\"AThe South Nation River in eastern Ontario is nearly running dry following a hot, dry summer. (Emmanuelle Poisson\/Radio-Canada)Some fire bans lifted \u2014 but not all<\/p>\n

Several communities also lifted their fire bans after Thursday’s rainfall, including Pembroke and Petawawa.<\/p>\n

Other communities such as Kingston say there still hasn’t been enough rain to merit that decision.<\/p>\n

The South Nation Conservation Authority had\u00a0declared a Level 3 low water advisory<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the most serious advisory it issues\u00a0\u2014 for its jurisdiction in eastern Ontario, which includes parts\u00a0of Ottawa.<\/p>\n

That remains in effect, with the authority saying\u00a0Thursday’s precipitation would not have been enough to replenish the water supply.<\/p>\n

For the\u00a0vast majority of farmers’ crops, the\u00a0recent blast of rain won’t be enough for\u00a0them to fully recover, said Trevor Hadwen, an agro-climate specialist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.<\/p>\n

The impacts of drought vary based on the type of crop, Hadwen said, with fruits the most susceptible and\u00a0cereal grains and grasses more hardy.<\/p>\n

“It takes a lot of time for plants to gain their moisture back,” Hadwen told CBC Radio’s\u00a0All In A Day\u00a0on Friday.<\/p>\n

“Even with the rainfall … that water hasn’t really gotten down into those deep soil moisture profiles, and certainly not into the groundwater.”<\/p>\n

Prolonged showers best<\/p>\n

In fact, instead of\u00a0a “big explosive rainfall event,”\u00a0what’s really needed after a long dry period\u00a0is a prolonged bout of steady showers, Hadwen said.<\/p>\n

Still, this week’s\u00a0rain did make a “huge difference,” said Bob Hobson, who grows several varieties of apples at Mountain Orchards near Kemptville, Ont.<\/p>\n

While the orchard’s extensive irrigation network had already helped create conditions for one of their best apple seasons ever, Hobson told\u00a0All In A Day\u00a0that there’s still concern about the increasingly unpredictable climate.<\/p>\n

“When trees go under stress, there’s always a price to pay,” he said. “You have to have a good attitude if you want to be a farmer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After weeks of parched conditions, Ottawans finally had to haul out their rain gear and their umbrellas this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-108648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}