Atmospheric River peaks Sunday morning – West Coast, especially Nitinat targeted. Also Cowichan Valley

Starts Friday Night

I wanted to put out a quick post on the upcoming rainfall.

While Port Alberni is not quite into Rainfall Warning territory, we will get significant totals and we could see high streamflows by the end of the weekend.

Expect rain to begin by late this afternoon for most of the north and central Island. Below is the 1-4PM picture.

You can see the animation for this forecast here.

It will also be blustery but I don’t expect the wind to be a huge issue.

Very heavy rain will push onto the West Coast overnight and continue into Saturday morning.

The river will then start to shift slightly to the south and by evening on Saturday the heaviest rainfall is predicted for Bamfield, Nitinat and the Cowichan Valley as well as the North Shore mountains of Vancouver while areas immediately south like Victoria and the lower Fraser Valley are dry.

Finally, the “firehose” will whip back to the north and shift the heaviest precipitation toward Tofino, Ucluelet, Port Alberni, Nanaimo and Parksville, but still mainly in Nitinat and Cowichan Valley as well.