Despite its history with flooding, the recent rainfall has had no impact on Fort William Historical Park.
More than 60 millimetres of rain fell on the city and region over the holiday weekend. As a precaution, Historical Park staff moved the farm animals off the historical site and into a barn on higher ground.
Staff also moved some historical items to higher ground.
Historical Park spokesman Marty Mascarin said they have water around the shoreline but it hasn’t kept the park from closing its doors.
He called the precautions standard operating procedure.
“We’ve been receiving visitors from California and Minnesota and so forth,” he said. “We’re just keeping our fingers crossed that the rain will let up. When you have a forecast of concentrated rainfall in the springtime or at any point, it’s always a cause for concern depending on the level of the river. It has been receding now it has gone up again.”
Mascarin said they’re keeping a close watch on the Kaministiquia River and keeping in touch with the Ontario Power Authority, which controls the dam further upstream.
In comparison to last year, Mascarin said the amount of water they were dealing with was about the same.
The high water hasn’t impacted any of the Old Fort’s canoeing programs as they haven’t started yet.
Mascarin added they are only offering walking tours at the moment.
Environment Canada spokesman Geoff Coulson said the city is going to experience drier conditions starting Wednesday. Another 10 to 20 millimetres of rain is expected to fall Tuesday.
He said it was a wet holiday weekend.
“Many locations were picking up about 80 millimetres of rain,” Coulson said. “A lot of that was falling during the early morning hours of Monday. Now looking at the radar, there’s one last band of precipitation from this very stubborn system that has been hanging out the Minnesota area.”
He said the weather will improve in the evening with plenty of sunshine in the forecast but added that the amount of rain the city did received was unusually high.
“Normally what we would expect to see for the whole month of May is about 67 millimetres of rain,” he said. “We over the course of the holiday weekend we saw more than a month’s worth of rainfall in many areas. Fortunately, before that it was relatively dry.”
The average daytime high for this time of year is around 18C. Coulson said the city will be a little cooler than the average with the daytime high expected to be around 17C on Wednesday.
