‘April Showers’ Region seeing heavy rain throughout weekend

The Spirit Catcher in Barrie with rain

If you’re heading outside this weekend make sure you bring an umbrella as Simcoe Muskoka remains under a yellow and orange rainfall warning according to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

David Phillips, climatologist with ECCC said Barrie could see 25 to 40 mm of rain over the next 24 hours.

“It’s a widespread weather system and it’s coming in with a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and going to yield that kind of April showers. For most of the day,” said Phillips. “Rain from Windsor to Wawa, and from Midland to Moosonee and from Kenora to Kingston. So a lot of Ontario is going to be affected.”

Most of the rain will fall over Saturday night with some areas experiencing thunderstorms.

“Because of a very unsettled kind of atmosphere, this is some kind of warm air pushing in, and it’s going to run into a cold front, and the cold front along with the cooler air at the surface and the warmer air above it is going to produce some thunderstorms, and that’s why we have this range of temperatures.” said Phillips.

The month of April continuing the trend of heavy rain.

“In March, we had nearly two and a half times the amount of rain that we’ve had,” said Phillips. “It’s not just the snow melt that has created a soggy ground. It’s also from from spring showers that came in March.”

With the soggy ground comes the chance of water pooling or flooding.

“It’s going to make for more flooding situations around rivers and creeks,” said Phillips. “The water is of course, very cold but also we could see slippery situations and more flooding.”

With Phillips warning not to pack away the Winter jacket just yet.

“That rain will turn to snow and so what we’re going to see certainly Sunday and Monday and into Tuesday, they’re going to be 11 degrees colder than they they should be,” said Phillips. “So it’s kind of a return to to wintry conditions, and then until next weekend, where we see it warming up again.”