Record rain feeding into soggy start to Manitoba summer

Record rain in July has put Southern Manitoba into a lower gear starting the summer. That has caused delays in many areas including agriculture and road construction.

If you haven’t been outside since the beginning of July you may have missed all the rain. Like a lot of rain. So much rain we’ve already crossed the average precipitation mark for July.

As you might expect this has caused some problems in various sectors across Manitoba.

One sector with the darkest storm clouds is road construction. Many projects have experienced delays due to the excessive precipitation according to Manitoba Heavy Construction Association president and CEO Chris Lorenc.

“It’s frustrating,” Lorenc explained. “So imagine, in our industry that we’re trying to find a dry spell and conditions which allow us that dry deck upon which to either replace an existing road or build a new road. If it’s wet, if the water is pooling or the conditions are too moist, we have to wait.”

Lorenc knows that is a frustrating answer for many, especially for those with plans of hitting the highway for a summer road trip. The delays aren’t something that make contractors enthusiastic.

“No contractor out there with a job wants to delay it till next year,” said Lorenc. “No contractor wants to spend any more time than is necessary to build what they have been contracted to build.”

Another drenched area of the economy is agriculture. Jake Ayre with Keystone Agricultural Producers says after two years of drought, wetter weather came roaring in leaving many fields across Southern Manitoba looking more like lakes.

“So we’ve gone from one extreme to the other. We’ve gone from too dry in the last two years, to now, we’re on the other end of the spectrum and it’s too wet,” Ayre said. “We’re ranging anywhere from, I believe it’s 99% of typical precipitation accumulation…I read in the latest Manitoba AG report was Winkler at 226%.”