It’s raining. How much of this stuff do we need right now?

It’s been a wet week in parts of the Northwest Territories. Just ask some of the athletes at Track and Field in Hay River.

Volunteers finally got the event off the ground after four straight years of cancellation, to be greeted by a soggy Thursday and a forecast of more rain on Friday.

In Yellowknife, meanwhile, Friday morning began with a steady downpour. Fort Smith was even forecast to receive a little snow mixed in with the rain.

Getting some rain probably shouldn’t be newsworthy, but towns like Hay River and Fort Smith are in an extended drought that has lasted since 2022.

The broader drought, reaching south into British Columbia and Alberta, is the driving force behind record-low water levels on some NWT rivers, most notably the Mackenzie River leading up to the Arctic Ocean, and on Great Slave Lake.

This week, the Canadian Coast Guard issued charts showing how low the water is right now.

The orange line is 2024’s water level for Great Slave Lake at Hay River and the Mackenzie River at Fort Simpson. Both are well below the established minimum from the past 40 to 50 years of data, and the difference from 2021 and 2022 – the green and blue lines – is vast.

On its own, one wet week won’t make a difference. But what if the wet weather keeps up? Much as it might mean sacrificing a summer, it would go some way toward addressing the drought and keeping this summer’s wildfire season in check.

We’ll come back to projections for the rest of the summer in a moment.

First, here’s some data so you can see how rainfall (and snowfall) looks in the communities we’re talking about. Let’s start with Yellowknife.

The chart above shows daily rainfall, in millimetres, for each day of a given year. Use the buttons to select a year from 2014 to 2024 (for which we have data up to the end of June 6).

We’ve highlighted June, July and August in light grey so you can see the year’s hottest months, when the wildfire risk is often at its peak.

In 2023, you can see Yellowknife received very little meaningful rain from about mid-June onward. The difference in years like 2018 or 2020 is clearly visible.

Next, let’s look at the same data for Hay River.

In 2023, only in September did Hay River see the kind of heavy rain that, in previous years, washed through the town at least several times in most summers.

Lastly, here’s the same data for Fort Smith.

Fort Smith shows a broadly similar pattern: little rain in summer 2022 or 2023 compared to previous years.

So what can we expect for the rest of this summer?

Based on its latest projections, it’s reasonable to conclude that Environment and Climate Change Canada doesn’t really know.

The precipitation forecast for Yellowknife through June, July and August shows a 33-percent chance of being below normal, 33-percent chance of being normal and 34-percent chance of being above normal, which reads like a meteorological shrug.

Meanwhile, parts of northern BC and Alberta that send water north to the NWT are expected to remain slightly drier than normal.

Even a summer of normal rainfall wouldn’t mean an end to the current drought and a swift return to normal water levels.

“A significant amount of precipitation (multiple months above average) is needed for water levels to rebound to normal levels,” NWT hydrologists recently wrote.

So far, there’s no sign of that happening. But a couple of wet days is a start, and it might just keep parts of the territory away from another major fire season a little while longer.