🌧️ 146 millimetres later, NOTL is asking the same question it asked in 2024

~ NOTL News Crew

Tuesday morning in Old Town looked almost normal: cafes open, tour buses idling on Queen Street, tourists weighing patio versus dining room. Ten minutes outside town, on Line 2 and Niagara Stone Road, it was a different NOTL entirely: vineyards under a foot of water, a lavender farm's owners standing knee-deep on their own property, culverts running like rivers. That's the split-screen this town keeps living through, postcard Old Town on one side, working farmland underwater on the other, courtesy of a storm that dropped six inches of rain on Virgil in five hours overnight Monday.

Melissa and Robert Achal woke up Tuesday to water almost knee-high across their property on Niagara Stone Road. They own NEOB Lavender, and by sunrise their fields, usually rows of purple stretching toward the road, were a lake. A tractor sat marooned in the middle of it. They weren't alone. Down the road, Stratus Vineyards had rows underwater. Nona Luisa's roadside stand shut for the day, water on every side. Henegan Road near downtown Virgil, Line 2, Line 6, Concession 4 and 5, all impassable at some point Tuesday morning.

The number behind it: 146.26 millimetres of rain fell on Virgil between 11:30pm Monday and 4:30am Tuesday, a back-building thunderstorm system that stalled over the same patch of sky and kept dumping for five straight hours. The town's drainage systems, already strained from a saturated summer and high lake levels, didn't stand a chance. NOTL activated its Emergency Control Group overnight, sent crews out to run pumping stations, barricade washed-out roads and clear downed trees, and kept them in the field through the day. The good news, if there is any: no watermain failures, and the town says drinking water stayed safe throughout.

Here's the part that's harder to shake. This isn't new. The Lake Report spent much of the summer of 2024 documenting a nearly identical story under the headline "Summer of the Flood," chronicling flash floods that overwhelmed the same sewers, drains, culverts and storm ponds after a pair of severe rainstorms. Two years and, per the town's own account, "significant investments" in stormwater management, culvert replacements and pond rehabilitation later, this week looked the same: flooded homes, flooded farmland, and a town statement acknowledging that "no municipal stormwater system can completely prevent flooding during rainfall events of this magnitude."

That's true, and also not really the point. Nobody expects a small-town drainage system to swallow six inches of rain in five hours without blinking. What's worth watching is whether this becomes the third or fourth "storm of the century" this town has weathered in three years, and whether the next round of infrastructure spending gets sized for that reality instead of the last one. Council has a parking study underway, a Transportation Master Plan update just opened for public input, and, as reported this week, roughly $2.35 million in unspent project funds sitting on the books from last year. None of that is stormwater money specifically, but it's a fair moment to ask where the next flood-proofing dollar is going, and how fast.

For now, the ask is simpler. Give ditches and culverts at least 24 hours to drain before reporting them full. Stay out of standing water. If your property flooded, call your insurer and photograph the damage before cleanup starts. Report concerns to the town at 905-468-3266 or through the My NOTL service request system, crews are still working through a significant backlog as of Wednesday.

The town closed out 2025 with roughly $2.35M in approved capital and operating project money that went unspent, per figures reported this week. Worth watching how much of any future allocation goes toward stormwater and drainage given this week's flooding.

The town launched the phased rollout of My.NOTL, a new customer service platform, this week. For now residents still call, email or use the existing online form; a self-service portal that lets you track requests is coming later this summer.

NOTL opened public engagement on an update to its Transportation Master Plan, first introduced in 2022. Consultant Stantec is running the process, and feedback windows like this are usually where decisions about future road, sidewalk and transit priorities actually get shaped.

Gary Friesen (hockey and lacrosse) and Kurt Hamm (nearly 40 years coaching youth soccer) are this year's inductees. Ceremony is Friday, August 21, 5pm at Meridian Credit Union Arena, open to the public, no RSVP needed.

NOTL Local's Joy Sanguedolce joined the crowd for Choir! Choir! Choir!'s sing-along at the Jackson-Triggs Amphitheatre last Saturday for her "Joy Tries It" column, one guided rehearsal and then 575 strangers singing four-part harmony together like they'd practiced for weeks. The Toronto-based group swings through wine country most summers, worth catching next time they're back.

Friday (today) is the deadline for the first installment of your 2026 final property tax bill. And Town Hall, the library, the Community Centre and Operations Building are closed Monday, August 3 for Civic Holiday, though the NOTL Museum's front lawn won't be quiet, the Heritage Festival runs there 11am-4pm the same day (see What's On).

The town is spraying targeted herbicide this summer to knock back invasive phragmites, the reed that chokes out native wetlands and, more to the point after this week, clogs the same ditches and culverts NOTL leans on to move stormwater. Treatments are targeted, not blanket, glyphosate and imazapyr only where it's needed. Spot a stand of it on or near your property? Report it through EDDMapS, iNaturalist, or to [email protected], early detection is most of the battle.

Andrzej Lipinski started Big Head as a virtual winery, no vineyard, no tasting room, just contracts and an idea, before building the real thing on Line 6 Road. This week that idea hit a ceiling no Canadian wine has ever hit: his 2023 Lipinski Syrah became the first Canadian wine to score a perfect 100 from Tony Aspler, one of the country's longest-running and most respected wine critics. Aspler's handed out exactly one other 100 in his career, a 2005 French Champagne. The wine itself is 90 percent Syrah, 10 percent Viognier, 100 percent estate-grown right here in NOTL, aged 30 months in a terracotta vessel. Aspler tasted an early barrel sample and called it a wine that "could be 100 when finally bottled." He wasn't wrong.

This is the kind of validation that doesn't happen to small Niagara producers often, and it happened to one three minutes off Line 6 Road. The tasting room's open daily (Sun-Thu 11am-5pm, Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am-6pm), walk-in flights start at $20 for three pours, and if Andrzej's around, he'll pour it himself.

Big Head Wines | 823 Line 6 Road, Niagara-on-the-Lake | bigheadwines.ca

NOTL's flooded twice in two summers now. If you were behind the next infrastructure dollar, where would you put it: stormwater, roads, or something else entirely?

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