This summer and last year: what a difference

As you can see from the rainfall map that Agriculture Canada puts out, this season, which started out quite dry, is now nice and moist. The city of Hamilton, and areas to the east like Grimsby, have had too much rain recently, but here it's been just right. The excess rain of the past week has actually made up for the dryness we experienced before it came.

Compare that to last year's picture, which I posted here at the end of July, 2007, when we were in the midst of a deavasting drought:

The end result: finally a summer I can enjoy.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Quick end-of-season drought note

The season's unprecendented drought, which I wrote about obsessively all summer - the driest it's been in almost 50 years in southern Ontario - never really broke.

The fall continued to be very dry, and we didn't get a decent rainfall until after US Thanksgiving (Nov. 22). Then - just before the cold weather arrived - we got more than two inches on two rainy days. This weekend, we're in for a winter storm with freezing rain. Not good!

And what's ahead? More cold: Environment Canada predicts that the weather this winter could be the coldest in nearly 15 years. It will be interesting to see how the trees survive the drought followed by serious cold.