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The month of June saw warmer-than-normal temperatures across Ontario, and experts say that trend is likely to continue through July.
Environment and Climate Change Canada has released its monthly weather review for June 2026, saying the province experienced warmer than normal temperatures on average last month.
Southwestern and central parts of Ontario saw the least deviation, with the average temperature staying close to the monthly normal value. That includes the Ottawa Valley.
Meanwhile, the most significant weather anomalies in June occurred in the far north, especially near Thunder Bay, where values were more than two degrees higher than normal.
The report also claims that temperature trends were “remarkably coherent” across the entire province: the first half of the month was warmer than normal everywhere, then temperatures plummeted all across Ontario mid-month before rising again and exceeding normal values in the last days amid a heat wave.
Precipitation amounts were much more varied, with much of northern Ontario reporting a drier June than normal, the northeast and the south experiencing expected amounts of rainfall, and higher-than-usual precipitation being recorded in some areas like northeast of Georgian Bay, the Kingston area and the Niagara region.
Ottawa – the closest city to the Valley listed in the report’s data – experienced a mean temperature 0.4 degrees higher than normal and 128 per cent of its normal precipitation in June.
Two significant weather events that occurred in June are listed in the report. The first was a series of thunderstorms that impacted the Greater Toronto Area from the 17th to the 18th, while the second is the ongoing heatwave that began at the end of the month. The impacts of that will be detailed in Environment Canada’s next monthly report, due to be released in early August.
The agency’s outlook for this month says the likelihood is high that July is also warmer than normal on the whole, while precipitation is expected to be close to normal levels.
(Steve Berard)
