The relentless early summer rain may have seemed like a cold, cruel joke from an uncaring higher power, but on the bright side, it prepared us well for the heatwave.
The once seemingly endless spree of wet weather topped up the Halifax Regional Municipality’s water supplies with more than enough water to make up for increased demand a week that has brought day after day of dry, hot weather.
HRM residents have been using about 10 million litres of water more per day this week than they were even in the week before, according to Carl Yates, general manager of Halifax Water.
But he’s got no worries.
“You know as well as I do June and July were extremely wet. So we started the month of August with our lakes, our main source of supply, very full,” he said. “We’re certainly going to be OK, I think.”
This week the city pumped about 150 million litres of water per day to residents, up from 140 million per day last week. Yates said the water system has very good capacity to begin with so the lakes being “chock-a-block full” just adds more help.
Still, Yates recommends people minimize their water use by watering their lawns early in the morning or after supper, rather than midday when much of it goes to waste.
Temperatures again hovered around the 30 C mark through HRM yesterday. Environment Canada’s forecast for today calls for more of the same, with mainly sunny skies and a high of 29 C.
