Weekend rainfall soaks London area homes, fields

Water pools along a garden edge after heavy rain in London, Ont. on Monday, June 29, 2015. (Marek Sutherland / CTV London)

After a special weather statement and rainfall warning were issued, southern Ontario was drenched by rain before the weekend was over.

Environment Canada was calling for an unseasonably strong low pressure system to bring a significant amount of rain to the region, and it did.

As of 8 p.m. Sunday, 43.5 millimetres of rain were reported at the London airport, while Springfield, northeast of Aylmer, saw the highest in our area with 56.9 mm reported as of 8 a.m. Sunday.

The highest rainfall in southern Ontario was reported in Welland, southwest of Niagara Falls, where 86.5 mm of water was reported.

The heavy rain has made it difficult for farmers in some areas to access their fields, but rainfall levels were so localized that others report they received less than a centimetre of rain over the weekend.

The additional rain, less than a week after a storm that saw several parts of London flooded, is also posing a challenge for restoration companies.

Belfor Restoration is reporting over 250 flooding cases over the past seven days in London, and many are expected to be lengthy repair projects.

And while some are seeing the same issue repeate itself, Matt Ellerton of Belfor says others are seeing the first flooding in decades.

"There's some that have been living in their house for 50 years and have never had a claim and then all of a sudden water is backed up in their basement and there's three or four inches in it."

As for what people can do to limit their chances of a flooded basement, there's really no definitive advice, Ellerton says.

"It's hard because you can never really say one thing or another. There's backup systems, there's a water-driven backup, there's a battery backup. Everything can fail, it's hard to prevent it 100 per cent and say it's not going to happen."

The company estimates it will take a few months to deal with the hundreds of cases, barring another major storm.