THUNDER BAY — Tuesday was the wettest November day on record in Thunder Bay.
Environment Canada had issued a rainfall warning as the result of a weather system that moved into Northwestern Ontario from the U.S.
That warning proved to be justified, as one observation site at Thunder Bay Airport collected 88.2 mm.
That easily broke the previous record of 78.2 mm set on Nov. 28, 2016.
Meteorologist Geoff Coulson said there was considerable variability in rainfall amounts around and outside the city, and even on the airport property, where another monitoring station captured 61.9 mm of rain on Tuesday.
"What we saw on the radar was quite interesting. There were pockets of heavier precipitation, so it's quite possible that even a separation of just hundreds of metres could bring more intense precipitation at one station than another."
Coulson said the heaviest rainfall occurred right along the Lake Superior shoreline from the US border to Thunder Bay and even up to Terrace Bay, where 42.3 mm fell.
"Farther away from Lake Superior, the amounts tended to drop off pretty quickly," he said.
The storm ended a string of four straight months of drier-than-normal weather in Thunder Bay.
November's total precipitation to date now stands at 104.6 mm, or twice the long-term average for the entire month.
