Rain not enough to ease dry Sask. conditions: meteorologist

The rain this week didn’t hurt the extremely dry areas of the province — but it wasn’t enough to help, either.

Environment Canada meteorologist John Paul Cragg said the rainfall totals across southern Saskatchewan varied between five and 10 millimetres.

The area around Biggar saw the most rain with about 30 millimetres between Wednesday night’s storm and the system that moved through Thursday evening.

While people who braved the weather for an outdoor concert in Regina on Thursday may have felt like it rained a lot, Cragg said it was actually a pretty weak system.

“It wasn’t a lot of rain and if you look at average rainfalls versus what people have been seeing across central and southern Saskatchewan. This is not going to really make up that deficit,” Cragg said.

As an example, Regina has only seen five millimetres of rain this month, when an average May will bring 50 millimetres.

“Five to 10 millimetres of precipitation is I’m sure better than nothing, but won’t be bringing areas close to average precipitation for April and May,” Cragg said.

Unfortunately for farmers seeding and people who fight wildfires, the hot dry weather is expected to return over the next seven days.

“We are starting off the long weekend a little bit coolish. Now, not coolish, compared to average, but coolish compared to what you’ve been experiencing so far this May,” Cragg said, noting the high of 19 C is close to average for this time of year.

On Sunday, the temperature will heat up again hitting the mid-20s.