It may still be drizzling out there but we are actually escaping the worst of the rain this morning.
As you can see above, most of the rain is going around us while we get shadowed. These regional showers will take all day to taper off but we should remain just cloudy for the most part.
On Friday we get another wave of precipitation starting first thing in the morning and lasting all day. Saturday looks dry but Sunday we are back to wet and more small systems come next week. April showers! Too bad we have already had the flowers. 😉
Tiny insignifcant snowpack.
The latest data from the South Island Jump creek snow station show no accumulation of snow (the 99999 values) but a tiny accumulation of snow water equivalent. (Between 10 and 7mm).
It is unlikely to be cold enough with any of the upcoming systems to have the snowpack increase. We are still looking at a record low, basically zero, snowpack for the south island.
Warm sea temperatures in the news
The BC River forecast centre already implicated the abnormally warm sea temperatures in our abnormal warm and snow free winter. Now it appears local media has caught wind of this phenomenon and local ocean scientists are saying it is the warmest they have ever seen in their records (>100 years). It was on CTV Vancouver Island (2) last night and continues tonight
Here is what Sea Surface Temperature anomalies look like right now. Red being higher than normal.
As you can see the waters off our coast most of North America are the most abnormally warm in the world right now. As the news is apparently going to get into tonight, this cannot be a good sign for our cold water loving salmon. With ocean temperatures high from this, and river temperatures high and water levels low from lack of snowpack and increased local logging activity, there is great potential for impact on our salmon stocks this year and in cycles to come.
Tomorrow will be the first meeting of the new Food Security and Climate Change committee for the City of Port Alberni. There is much work to be done.
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