(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Brody Langager

much milder than usual

Red Deer had driest winter in 99 years

Mar 5, 2021 | 1:30 PM

If you thought it was a mild winter, you’re right.

Red Deer is coming off of its driest winter in 99 years and second driest in the past 136 years.

Kyle Fougere, a Meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada says this has been a pretty interesting winter.

“Red Deer had 9.6 millimetres (of precipitation) this winter. That’s December, January, February, for those three months… their driest on record,” he shared.

“(Red Deer) averages 49.9 during that time span. Previous driest that they’d had was 19.5 millimetres in 1987, so we actually got half of what the previous driest was. And it was less than 20 per cent of what they’d normally get in an average winter.”

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Fougere says Calgary saw above normal precipitation, but Edmonton had the second driest winter they’ve seen in 136 years.

The Alberta Water Council has released their Building Resiliency to Drought Guide for municipalities to learn more about past droughts, and how to plan for future ones.

But when it comes to moisture levels, Fougere says there’s still hope yet for this year.

“It really is too soon to know if we’re going to have those kinds of impacts, as we get into late spring. Because we just tend to see quite a bit of [precipitation] in these spring months, in March, April and May, especially in March and April.”

The toughest stretch of winter came at the start of February when many areas in Alberta broke their records for overnight low temperatures, with some of those records having gone back as far as 1933.