Rain pools on the road in the area of Mitton & Maria in Sarnia, September 11, 2019. (Photo courtesy of  Leo Koning)Rain pools on the road in the area of Mitton & Maria in Sarnia, September 11, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Leo Koning)
Windsor

Southwestern Ontario smashes rainfall records in weekend deluge

Parts of Southwestern Ontario did not just break records for rainfall on Saturday, they obliterated them.

The old record was 15 millimetres for January 12, but Windsor-Essex got 50 millimetres of rain. London had 56.6 millimetres, while Sarnia had 61 millimetres.

Not only is that a record for January 12, but Environment Canada Meteorologist Gerald Cheng said it was a record for any day in January.

The monthly record for Windsor-Essex was 43 millimetres set on January 4, 1993. Similarly, the record for January in London was 45 millimetres, while in Sarnia, the extreme benchmark was 39.8 millimetres set on January 17, 2006.

All that rain Saturday caused flooding across the region. Cheng said it just had nowhere to go.

"It's not like the summer where the ground can absorb a lot of rain," he said.

Cheng said the forecast does not call for very much precipitation this week, although we can expect some flurries Wednesday and periods of snow Friday and Saturday.

"I think we can take a breather," laughed Cheng. "We won't see any major disturbances moving through the area. I would say, until the weekend."

There were no records available for Chatham-Kent.

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