Partly Cloudy and slight chance of rain. Fire Danger moderate but forests very dry.

Rain sticking to North End

Don’t expect much in the way of precipitation for the next few days if you are south of Campbell River.

While there are chances for rain on many days in the next seven, none are very significant.

Here are the three day total rainfall forecasts, first, from 5PM Wednesday (yesterday) to 5PM Saturday:

Rain Scale – Millimeters on top, centi-inches on bottom. (1024cin = 10 inches)

There is some good rain on the North Island but as you can see, much less falls south of Campbell River and Victoria remains completely dry. Just 1mm of rain is forecast in the Alberni Valley.

Here is Saturday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon:

Rain Scale – Millimeters on top, centi-inches on bottom. (1024cin = 10 inches)

Less rain expected for much of the North Island except in the mountains and less for the South Island as well except a little on the West Coast.

So don’t expect the drought to end anytime soon.

Fire Danger moderate

On the bright side, the last few days of cooler weather and a little bit of rain last week knocked down the fire rating across much of the province including the island.

Only the Parksville, Nanaimo and Duncan areas are still at a high rating and this picture for the Island is not expected to change to much over the next few days.

However, please remember the fire rating takes *weather* into account as well as the dryness of the forest. The danger rating is lower because of the weather, but the forests are still experiencing a huge drought and are very dry. Please be very careful with any campfires.

Moderate earthquake near Haida Gwaii.

An earthquake occurred just sound of Haida Gwaii last night. It is not unusual for the area. No Tsunami was generated.

Last night's M5.8 offshore #BritishColumbia earthquake was not unusual…
In this region where tectonic plates move apart, collide, and slide past one another, nearly 100 earthquakes of M>5 have occurred during the past 30 years.https://t.co/CwgiLGWcs0 pic.twitter.com/oUBEndmtSC
— John Cassidy (@earthquakeguy) July 4, 2019

One of our readers went to the live seismograph feed from Holberg and saw an aftershock an hour or so later.

There are three graphs, the bottom is the longest time period, the past two hours (this was taken last night), the middle a one is the past 10 minutes and the top is the past minute. You can see the main quake on the bottom left hand side followed by an aftershock on the bottom right and middle left. What a great resource!

You can check out the seismograms all over Canada including a huge number on Vancouver Island here.

Here’s the Port Alberni station.

Happy Fourth of July to any American readers out there! We had a great Canada Day in Monday!