Southern Alberta has seen its far share of rain this summer. Lethbridge will finish June having seen about 130 millimetres of rain, up from an average of about 100 millimetres. “It’s been it’s been a wet month,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor. “We’ve had five days of very significant rainfall has been recorded in the Lethbridge area. It’s been significantly enhanced in the last 24 hours with an upslope flow component.” It’s a welcome change after years of drought in southern Alberta, where dry conditions between 2017 and 2024 damaged the region’s waterways and ecosystems. “The drought in 2024 was kind of the worst of a multi-year drought where we saw a lot of streams drying up, dead fish lying in the bottom of the stream. We saw dugouts empty,” said Shannon Frank, who is the CEO of Oldman Watershed Council. Back-to-back summers with significant rain events are helping repair the damage done by dry conditions. Frank said groundwater is starting to be restored and streams that ran dry are flowing once again. “We’re seeing dugouts filling up. We’re seeing wetlands expanding in areas that are typically pretty dry,” she said. “Overall, we’re seeing a lot of improvements.” But it doesn’t seem there’s to much rain left in the forecast, as Environment Canada is predicting more typical summer weather in July and August. Proctor says there will still be a chance of severe weather in Lethbridge. “Typically, our severe weather intensity in the Lethbridge area peaks in the month of July and then sort of takes the tail off,” he said. “We’ve got another six weeks of active severe weather season to go still.”
