PEI

Just how wet and cold was July on P.E.I.?

Islanders and visitors hoping for beach days had a disappointing month.

Temperature was 1.1 C below normal

Elsa brought some heavy rain to P.E.I. July 9. (Lorna Matheson/Facebook)

Islanders and visitors hoping for beach days had a disappointing month.

July, typically the driest month of the year on P.E.I., was the wettest of 2021 so far.

There was 134.1 millimetres of rain last month, 68 per cent more than normal. That topped the amount of precipitation in February, which had been the wettest so far with 131.7 millimetres.

There were just 12 days without rain in July.

July is usually also the hottest month of the year with an average temperature, including daytime highs and nighttime lows, of 18.7 C. The average this year was 17.6 C. It felt that much cooler after an exceptionally warm June, which at 17.4 C this year was almost as warm as July.

There was one good stretch of beach weather, from July 16-19 the temperature rose above 25 C every day. There was only one other day all month when the temperature passed 25 C.

By contrast, in June the temperature rose over 25 C on eight days.

While beachgoers may have found the weather disappointing, the Island's potato fields have been thriving in the wet weather.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Yarr

Web journalist

Kevin Yarr is the early morning web journalist at CBC P.E.I. Kevin has a specialty in data journalism, and how statistics relate to the changing lives of Islanders. He has a BSc and a BA from Dalhousie University, and studied journalism at Holland College in Charlottetown. You can reach him at kevin.yarr@cbc.ca.