Summer of 2023 was the wettest on record for much of the Maritimes

If you were living in the Maritimes this summer, it will come as no surprise that this one was one of the wettest on record for the region.

Collectively, the months of June, July and August were a washout in the Maritimes, with not only many days of rain, but many days of heavy rain. Many in the region saw more than double the average rainfall in those three months.

There were numerous flash-flooding events, including the historic flood in Nova Scotia in July.

It all added up to a record amount of summer rainfall for many parts of the region. 

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, preliminary results indicate that Yarmouth, Greenwood, Kentville and Sydney in Nova Scotia, along with Saint John, Fredericton and Charlottetown all recorded their wettest summers on record. 

It is important to note here that while these stations did break records, they are only the Environment Canada stations where we have historical record data available to look back at.

There is no official weather station in Mahone Bay, however it's safe to assume that the volunteer recording of 980 mm is a modern-day summer record.

The same can likely be said for the entire South Shore region, where many locations received over 800 mm of rainfall in three months.

In the Halifax area, things get complicated, again thanks to where records are maintained.

In the Halifax downtown area, Shearwater is where Environment Canada records are kept and where 2023 officially ranks as the third wettest summer with 654 mm.

In the summer of 1985, there was 664 mm of rain recorded at Shearwater thanks to an extremely wet June, followed by a damp July and August. The summer of 1927 is at the top of the wettest summer list for Halifax, with 687 mm recorded at the old downtown site.

Thanks to modern day observations, we know that 2023 rainfall totals in the Halifax-Dartmouth area actually ranged between 650 to 740 mm, including Environment Canada's Halifax Windsor Park site (728 mm) and Halifax Kootenay site (740 mm).

If we zoom out a little further we see that totals were even higher just to the northwest, where Hammonds Plains recorded 780 to 860 mm of rain, Fall River picked up 812 mm of rain and the Environment Canada Bedford Range site recorded 816 mm.

So based on these numbers, can we unofficially say that 2023 was also the wettest modern-day summer in Halifax.

While it probably was, if we had the same number of official and unofficial stations in 1985 and 1927 that we do today, we might also have found some higher totals in those summers as well.

Again, it's complicated when it comes to limited weather stations and variable summer rainfall.

The bottom line is the summer of 2023 was a cloudy soaker of a summer in the Maritimes and one that we will won't forget any time soon.