‘Goldilocks kind of summer’: What is behind this longer, warmer Hamilton summer?

Some leaves have already started to turn yellow.

No, it's not early autumn, but a long, dry summer in Southern Ontario.

In Hamilton, the temperature has been above 20 C for 97 consecutive days and is projected to pass its 100-day streak this Friday - something that, according to weather historian Rolf Campbell on the @YHM_Weather Twitter account, has happened only twice in the city's history.

The next two weeks show temperatures will remain on the high side of 20 degrees, with possible rain on Sept. 4.

The key here is the consistency of the temperature.

It's been comfortably warm, with no extreme rainfalls spoiling the summer weekends, and mostly pleasantly sunny.

A Goldilocks kind of summer," as Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist for Environment Canada, calls it, which almost passes for a delightfully boring" season.

But this could be a concerning trend, hinting at extreme heat and extreme rainfall for the coming years, according to Ian Borsuk, climate-change campaign co-ordinator with Environment Hamilton.

We've locked (warm weather) in ... and it's only going to get worse," Borsuk said. He agreed the fairly dry summer" is one of the reasons why trees are turning yellow and shedding early.

Rainfall this summer - despite Tuesday's downpour - has been lower than average, with Hamilton receiving about 80 per cent of the expected long-term average precipitation.

This led the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) to issue a Level 1 low-water response, which is their way of asking Hamiltonians to reduce their water consumption by 10 per cent. This is focused on preserving surface and ground-level water.

Jonathan Bastien, water resources engineer at HCA, told The Spectator that while rainfall during the last three months has been scarce, August has just been odd because we went for long stretches with no rain" followed by three or four consecutive days of rain.

The August rain still had no effect on the temperature.

In contrast, weather from August 2010 shows how clouds and rain continuously pushed the temperatures lower, mostly below 20 C.

Bastien said the frequency of low-water responses has increased. It has been a phenomenon for the last three summers, as opposed to once every three years between 2002 and 2022.

Just three-years' worth of data isn't enough data to understand the trend and make definitive conclusions or to say that it's related to climate change, Bastien cautioned, but it is an indication that we just had three drier years."

Hamilton's recent climate change impact adaptation plan could help mitigate the effects of human activities on the environment, said Borsuk, who is actively involved in the process.

Ritika Dubey is a reporter at The Spectator. rdubey@thespec.com