weather record toronto

Toronto just broke a new record for being super moist

Yesterday's wet weather dumped 56 millimetres of rain over Toronto, making it the fifth rainiest September day on record in 2021 for the city.

It wasn't the biggest storm this summer or even in the past few weeks, but yesterday's weather still managed to break at least two records, and fall just shy of a third.

A daily mean humidity of 98.1 per cent at Toronto Pearson International Airport yesterday is actually the moistest (cringe) September 22nd reported since record-keeping began in 1953.

And it wasn't a close margin either, the second-moistest (sorry again) September 22nd on record is a comparatively arid daily mean humidity of 91.9 per cent measured in 1986.

The median average daily mean humidity for this calendar date from 1991 to 2020 is just 70.75 per cent.

It was also the wettest September 22nd on record since that metric was first recorded in 1938.

These moisture and wetness records were almost joined by another. A daily mean wind of 24.5 kilometres per hour recorded at Pearson yesterday was the second-windiest September 22nd on record, and the windiest in over 60 years.

This distinction still falls well short of the record daily mean winds for September 22, which averaged at 35.3 kilometres per hour on Sept 22, 1954, just a couple of weeks before Hurricane Hazel pummelled Toronto.

The wettest and windiest weather seems to have moved on, but keep that umbrella on standby, because there is likely more rain in store for Toronto in the coming days.

Lead photo by

Jack Landau


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