Most of the time, the weather in Saskatchewan is something other than it's been this year.
Usually, it's the ultimate commonality - the thing that we all share. Good, bad or indifferent, the weather becomes the ultimate agreeable topic of conversation with strangers or even a safe topic among close friends. (Believe it or not, not everyone cares about the 'Riders ... or agrees on how they are run.)
Even when it's horrible, the weather has been a source of pride for us in Saskatchewan. We survive the bitter, long, cold winters and call ourselves Saskatchewan tough.We've emerged from the drought of the Great Depression and the sporadic droughts since and say the experience shaped our character.
Saskatchewan's weather has made us a stubborn, determined patient lot. Mostly, though, it's brought us together as a community, and taught us to share and be humble.
But there's something about the weather this spring that goes well beyond our past experiences. This spring's weather has gone beyond a pleasant (or, more often than not, unpleasant) conversation piece to something much more.
And as the people of Maple Creek found out recently when they were deluged by four to six inches of rain in mere minutes, this topic can quickly become a sinister one.
About the only blessing was that we at least we aren't talking about a tornado today hammering one of our towns or cities, with its shredding violent winds that are such a threat to property and human life. But the torrent of water that hit Maple Creek was - in many ways - no less devastating.
As vicious as a tornado may be, it's not often accompanied by four to six inches of rain that floods entire basements and even houses to their kitchen counter tops. There were 300 homes in the community of 2,600 badly damaged by flooding. Some will be written off as the flooding literally washed mobile homes off their foundations. This, too, was like the effects of a tornado.
Also, as violent as a tornado can be to a town or farm, it doesn't have the capacity to rip away a 75-metre section of the Trans-Canada Highway - the lifeline for not just rural people but the entire province. A tornado doesn't cause a 100-mile detour.
A tornado - for as devastating as it is to the confined area it hits - seldom has the capacity to shutdown an entire provincial park as has happened in the Cypress Hills. Like the road closure of the No. 1 highway, this, too, was an even beyond anyone's recollection.
A few tornados touch down in Saskatchewan each year. This was, as some climatologists are now suggesting, a one-in-500-year rain.
And while the focus has been the rainstorm and flash flooding that hit Maple Creek and southwest Saskatchewan, it's important to remember that most everywhere else in the province is suffering from the effects of what will surely go down as the wettest spring on record.
Flooded roads and washed away bridges have also occurred in Humboldt and the Saskatoon area. A section of cliff fell away in Mainprize Park near Estevan, almost killing an infant.And most everywhere you go in Saskatchewan, we are seeing the impact of flooding on our farming. The problem now goes well beyond unseeded land - nearly a third of the province's usual seeded acreage. The problem now is a substantial percentage of that remaining 70 per cent of Saskatchewan farmland that was seeded has been ruined by flooding.
This truly has been a Saskatchewan spring like no other - one that will require a great deal of disaster relief from the provincial and especially the federal government.
The good news, however, is that we will get through it and that the weather will again become nothing more than a pleasant distraction.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 15 years.
