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Weather and Gardening Discussion

Drought conditions are recorded monthly, so as of now all we have are the June conditions
This is as of June 30:
cdm_2506_en.jpg
 
Definitely no drought in the southern part of the region, but it sounds like they have had very little of this up north. Smoke starting to move in again this afternoon apparently.
UrbanWarrior said:
Yeah its pretty exceptional this year. Ive never seen the rivers running high for such a sustained period.
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Yeah the Bow is quite high, a lot of the little pathways I like to walk on the N side of Edworthy are currently under water.

Definitely no drought in the southern part of the region, but it sounds like they have had very little of this up north. Smoke starting to move in again this afternoon apparently.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
Yesterday also may have bumped it to 4th or even 3rd, with another 25.3 mm of rain (part of the 167.5 mm). The data about 5th place wouldn't have included that yet.
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It's also data by the airport. Because thunderstorms are so localized, it might already be the wettest overall for the city, just not at the airport.
 
There are four weather reporting stations in the Calgary area. Two are Nav Canada stations at Springbank Airport and YYC, and the other two are Environment and Climate Change Canada stations at COP and YYC
These are the precipitation totals for the month of July as of July 28th
YYC - ECCC data: 161.2 mm
YYC - NAVCAN data: 167.5 mm
COP - ECCC data: 183.5 mm
Springbank airport - NAVCAN data: 212 mm
 
Roaring Flames said:
There are four weather reporting stations in the Calgary area. Two are Nav Canada stations at Springbank Airport and YYC, and the other two are Environment and Climate Change Canada stations at COP and YYC
These are the precipitation totals for the month of July as of July 28th
YYC - ECCC data: 161.2 mm
YYC - NAVCAN data: 167.5 mm
COP - ECCC data: 183.5 mm
Springbank airport - NAVCAN data: 212 mm
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Springbank to YCC is about 25km, and shows a 25 to 30% difference in rainfall. Illustrates the highly localized rain conditions here.
 
I flew in yesterday and from the plane was shocked how green Calgary and area is. Usually by now everything's a mix of light green, yellow and brown. If I'm not mistaken, don't la nina years usually have a wet summer?
 
Surrealplaces said:
I flew in yesterday and from the plane was shocked how green Calgary and area is. Usually by now everything's a mix of light green, yellow and brown. If I'm not mistaken, don't la nina years usually have a wet summer?
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It's been one of the better summers in recent memory for plants, particularly trees. All the stats don't easily reflect it, but the secret sauce this year was many soaking rains that were spread out over June and July, a general lack of hail storms (apart from a few big ones in the NW/NE), and no extended dry/hot periods (until just recently).

For anyone getting the idea that this summer has been a cold and wet one, here's a helpful stat to remind us that climate change is alive and well, for better or worse. From that https://www.reddit.com/r/CalgaryWxRecords/ . Despite missing out on a few 30 degree days this summer it's still been one of the warmest summers in Calgary's history.

Cold nights are a thing of the past, depending on how September 2025 goes, we might end up in the top 2 or 3 for most days with a high minimum temperature:

1756828906702.png
 
Just yesterday my wife and I were talking about how we used to be paranoid of frost warnings and my vegetable garden at this time of year, but it's been at least a decade or longer since I've had to worry about a frost in late August-early September. In fact for my particular backyard, I haven't had a killing frost on the garden during September for quite a few years.
 
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Another interesting factoid from https://www.reddit.com/r/CalgaryWxRecords/ .

Longest streak of above 4 degrees in history, pushing 120+ days.

1758734107143.png

We might test this low tonight or tomorrow, but if it doesn't drop too low, the forecast shows we have a good 7 to 10 more days at least - might end up in the 130+ days.

Of the 10 longest streaks in 145 years of data, 7 are in the past 15 years.
 
CBBarnett said:
Of the 10 longest streaks in 145 years of data, 7 are in the past 15 years.
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Interesting. Running a garden every year I'm always mindful of days when there may be frost. There's been a noticeable change in the lack of frost over the last 15 years. I used to get frost on the garden in September without fail. of the past 10 years, I've had frost in September once maybe twice. I don't know if it's overall climate change, or a cycle, or heat island effects. Maybe all three.

The other thing that's interesting is one of my apple trees now produces baseball sized apples, that turn red. This has been the case the last few years with these warm falls. I didn't even know the tree could produce until recently. They used to be smaller green apples and would be done by early September.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Interesting. Running a garden every year I'm always mindful of days when there may be frost. There's been a noticeable change in the lack of frost over the last 15 years. I used to get frost on the garden in September without fail. of the past 10 years, I've had frost in September once maybe twice. I don't know if it's overall climate change, or a cycle, or heat island effects. Maybe all three.

The other thing that's interesting is one of my apple trees now produces baseball sized apples, that turn red. This has been the case the last few years with these warm falls. I didn't even know the tree could produce until recently. They used to be smaller green apples and would be done by early September.
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I think this is one of the more noticeable climate change impacts.

Over the past 30 years Calgary's growing season has extended 2 to 4 weeks on average, the really extreme years are already pushing beyond that. That's an extra month of growing. That's such a change that's it's readily noticeable to anyone, not just statistically interesting nuance you can only see in data. Apples and tomatoes actually can grow here reliably now (assuming reliable water sources).
 
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