Leader-Post: Sask. flooding top weather story of 2011

Environment Canada picked the severe flooding in Saskatchewan
this past spring as the top weather story of 2011.

Photograph by: Troy Fleece, Regina Leader-Post files

Severe flooding ravaged Saskatchewan this past spring and summer and on Thursday, it was listed by Environment Canada as the top story of the year.

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Environment Canada - Weather and Meteorology - Canada's Top Ten Weather Stories for 2011





Environment Canada's Top 10 List:

1. Historic Flood Fights in the West (Prairies)
2. Slave Lake Burning (Slave Lake, Alberta)
3. Richelieu Flooding…Quebec’s Longest-Lived Disaster (Southern Quebec)
4. Down on the Farm: Doom to Boom (Across Canada)
5. Tornado Goderich in a Wild Week of Weather (Ontario)
6. Good Night, Irene...and, Katia, Maria and Ophelia (Atlantic)
7. Summer: Hummer or Bummer? (Across Canada)
8. Arctic Sea Ice near Record Low (Arctic)
9. Groundhog Day Storm: Snowmageddon or Snowbigdeal? (Ontario, Quebec, Maritimes)10. Wicked Winds from the West (Southern Alberta)


David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada said the flooding in the Prairies deserved more recognition than just the top weather story of the year.

“It should be the number one news story, not just the number one weather story. It should be the number one news story for this country. It really was such a profound effect on the economy, on people’s lives, on the numbers of people and the unprecedented view,” said Phillips.

"These were epic events," he continued.

Phillips said the flooding could only be described as a "perfect storm."

"We use that as a cliché, that notion of the perfect storm, but in many ways it was. I remember last year when I was talking about the top 10 and it wasn’t my origination.

"I talked to some water engineers and after that weather bomb in October of 2010, they said they were very worried about flooding in the spring. This could have an implication there and when you looked at it, the weather afterwards just got progressively worse.

"It was just almost as if you could have said to Hollywood, order me up the worst possible flood and what would the conditions that would do to produce that and nature delivered on it," said Phillips.

He added that the flood was unprecedented in Saskatchewan and Manitoba because of how long it lasted.

"The best kind of flood is a come to convince that it hits and runs. You get drenched in rain and then you start the clean-up right away.

These ones that you face, it seems to be in many years, is just the psychological wear down.

I mean, it beats you up physically, that’s given with all the sandbagging and bailing and the evacuating that just goes on, but also the fact that it’s just the constant story that consumes everybody," said Phillips.

The flooding effects on farmers was the reason number four on the top 10 list was Down on the Farm: Doom to Boom.

After the growing season began with the ground extremely wet, the agricultural sector of the economy was under threat.

"It was almost as if Nature had enough and was punishing you and finally on the first day of summer, some dryness came at the perfect time, some heat, the crop moved on and then the perfect, perfect kind of fall harvest," said Phillips.

"I mean, three months of just the gorgeous, warmest, dryest period on record. I mean, by Thanksgiving the harvest was over. They were still harvesting here in Ontario in December," Phillips continued.

"It became an economic boom and that’s why I talk about it from doom, which it was, to boom. I mean, it just shows you that farmers are the most optimistic people around.

"They never throw in the towel until they absolutely have to," said Phillips. "It's really a tremendous credit to those farmers who did persevere, re-seed or waited and stuck it out and didn't just pack it in."