Today
Has it rained enough in Ottawa?
The last rain heavy enough to soak in fell over a week ago. What has fallen since wet the leaves and no more.
Ottawa has had 91.6mm of rain in the last 30 days. A normal October here brings 96.4mm, so the ground is roughly where it should be for the time of year.
Rain reaching the roots · 14 days
17 OctToday
Reached the roots
Rain that did not
one day of 14
Thirty years
Rain in Ottawa through a normal year
Across a normal year Ottawa gets about 1039.2mm of rain, most of it in June (105.8mm) and least in February (59.8mm).
A normal October in Ottawa has rain on 15 days. Only 11 of them bring enough to reach a root.
That makes Ottawa one of the wetter places this site covers in Canada in October — 6th of 11, against Vancouver at the wet end (249.2mm) and Edmonton at the dry end (23.1mm).
JFebMAMJunJASOND
Average rainfall by month, 1995–2024
What it means
What that means for what you grow
- Pots and hanging basketsWorth checking by hand even so — a pot in the sun can dry out in a wet week, because there is so little soil to hold anything.
- Beds and bordersNothing needed. Watering soil that is already wet does more harm than good.
- New plantingsAnything planted within the last month is the exception; its roots have not spread far enough to find water on their own.