Rainfall record for Windsor broken

Precipitation was 42.2 mm on Sunday

Feel free to complain, WindsorEssex residents: This has indeed been unusually bad weather for mid-April, according to Environment Canada.

Senior meteorologist Geoff Coulson said the weather station at Windsor Airport reported 42.2 millimetres of rain on Sunday — making it Windsor’s rainiest April 15 on record.

“We certainly got a lot, and with some freezing rain mixed in there as well,” Coulson said. Windsor’s previous record for April 15 was 30.7 mm, set back in 1972.

Combined with Saturday ’s rainfall of 22.8 mm, the weekend’s total precipitation reached 65 mm. That’s still less than the rainiest single April day in Windsor history — 94.6 mm on April 20, 2000. “This has been quite a noteworthy event, right across southern Ontario,” Coulson said. “It’s been a massive storm system.” According to Coulson, the southwestern tip of the province was actually spared the worst of weekend conditions. Windsor-Essex only experienced a few hours of freezing rain, while Toronto became “a skating rink,” Coulson said. But Environment Canada was forecasting a 60 per cent chance of local snow flurries Tuesday, with high temperatures near 3 C. “It’s the back end of the system,” Coulson said. “The normal high for this time of year should be about 14 C.” Temperatures should bounce back Wednesday, but with a 60 per cent chance of more rain. Coulson said meteorologists in his office started seeing indicators of the storm a week ago: Big, slow-moving low-pressure systems from Colorado and Texas that merged and crept toward the Great Lakes. “Unfortunately, in this particular case, we were bang on — a very impactful event,” Coulson said.