Canada’s latest flood season is less a freak event than a preview of what lies ahead, as rapid snowmelt, intense rainfall and frozen ground increasingly collide with infrastructure that was never built for today’s extremes, according to Zurich Resilience Solutions Canada.
David Jackson (pictured), AVP, general property at Zurich’s risk consulting arm, said this year’s flooding reflects a broader pattern of compounding weather pressures rather than single, isolated triggers. That combination, he warned, is driving more frequent surface flooding across both urban and rural areas and exposing the limits of existing systems.
At the centre of the problem is how this past winter and spring unfolded. Canada saw above‑normal snowpack in the latter part of the winter, followed by a sharp and early warm‑up. Temperatures jumped “from negative to double digit… almost overnight,” Jackson said, so snow that would typically melt over several weeks disappeared within days. River and stream systems were pushed close to capacity before spring had properly begun.
Heavy April rainfall then hit on top of that. Instead of gradual, low‑intensity showers, many regions experienced short bursts of intense rain falling on watersheds already swollen by meltwater. Rain on top of rapid melt, on top of already‑full rivers created what Jackson described as a stacked‑up series of pressures, with each element amplifying the next.
Frozen ground made matters worse. Despite warmer air, “the ground is often still frozen solid” after a cold winter, he noted. Rather than absorbing meltwater and rain, frozen soil behaves “almost like concrete,” sending water straight into drainage systems and waterways. With nowhere to go, runoff accelerates into rivers, culverts and storm sewers that are already under strain.
For Jackson, this is not just a flood story but a template for modern extreme weather in Canada. Whether the peril is flood, wildfire or windstorm, events are “not necessarily one issue,” he said. “It’s compounding issues that are really amplifying the events that we’re seeing.”
Those amplified events are colliding with infrastructure designed for a different era. Municipal stormwater systems were typically built using historical assumptions, such as 25‑year flood events and shorter‑duration rainfalls. Today, they are being tested by higher volumes, faster onset conditions and repeated downpours over a season.
The strain is particularly visible in Toronto. Jackson said the city “got off lightly” last year, but experienced two notable flood events in the year before. More importantly, he argued, the bar for what counts as unusual weather has shifted. “Nowadays, every time we have an intensive rainfall, the city experiences flooding,” he said, describing this as a “new normal.”
That normalisation helps explain why floods often receive less attention than other hazards, despite the size of the losses. Highly visual events such as tornadoes can dominate headlines and social media feeds even when damage is limited. By contrast, widespread basement flooding and overwhelmed drains in a major city may merit only a traffic update and brief coverage of “messy commutes,” even when hundreds or thousands of properties are affected.
“These recurring events represent a material and growing exposure for households, businesses and insurers,” Jackson said. He pointed to prolonged rainfall that quietly overwhelms drainage systems, claiming that while the damage is less spectacular than a single catastrophic storm, the cumulative impact can be significant.
He also sees a widening disconnect between evolving climate conditions, infrastructure capacity and the systems meant to manage risk. Ageing stormwater networks, he said, reflect long‑term deferred maintenance and underinvestment in upgrades. “Systems weren’t designed for the intensity or frequency of the weather patterns we’re seeing now,” he said.
Infrastructure solutions are largely “government‑led,” Jackson acknowledged, but he is blunt about the limits of waiting for public fixes. “Relying on the government, everyone to fix it for us, it’s never going to happen,” he said.
In his view, that reality is pushing more responsibility onto property owners and businesses to understand their own exposure and build resilience into their decisions. That can range from basic site‑level measures – how snow is stored, how drains are maintained – through to more strategic questions around site selection, supply chains and business continuity planning.
Jackson stressed that this year’s flood season should not be treated as a one‑off shock. While communities are still in recovery mode now, he expects the focus to shift back to preparation within weeks. “Give it a few weeks,” he said, and attention will move on – but organisations should already be planning for “the same flood events next year.”
