Welcome to the first day of (Meteorological) Spring!
The rain should taper off this until around noon and then will pick up steam again and really get going around 2 or 3PM when the Pineapple Express firehose points squarely at us.
It should taper off overnight before delivering its final, somewhat weak blow on Saturday morning.
We have received 39.88mm so far during this storm (including the slush!) and most of that, 27.4mm, came yesterday, the final day of February. We were expecting about 50-80mm from this storm through Saturday so we’re pretty much on track for that.
Now since it is March 1st, it is in fact the start of Spring for Meteorological Data. Here are the stats, I’m going to use what I wrote a few days ago and update it:
We had got 114.8mm as of Sunday for February which is about half the 234mm we normally get in February.
The past few days have boosted that total for February to 160.3mm. Still well below normal.
Our normal average high for February is 3.6C and we’ve managed a full degree more than that at 4.8C 4.6C.
In contrast, January 2013 was half a degree cooler on average at 1.5C than the normal average for the month of 2.1C. It was quite dry with only 105.9mm of rain compared to our normal of 238mm.
Maquinna Elementary school station recorded an average for December of 2.3C which is pretty close to the 2.5C normal. However, the 110.4mm it recorded for December was way below the 275mm normal for the month.
If we average out our ‘normal’ temperatures and add up our rain totals for Winter 2012/2013 then average temperature should be around 2.7C and our rain accumulation should be 749mm.
Winter 2012/2013:
Average Temperature: 2.8C (+0.1C basically average)
Rainfall Accumulation: 376.6mm (-372.4mm or 50% of normal)
It’s difficult to say whether this lack of rain at lower elevations will have a big effect. The snowpack on Vancouver Island is at 107% according to the BC River Forecast center. So that is good. I’m thinking that is the most important thing to come out of winter. If the dryness continues through spring though, that will certainly cause problems for our farmers.
We will have some dry weather starting Sunday.
Climate Change?
Finally, I heard Mark Madryga of CKNW on the radio this morning say that Vancouver Airport received no snow in January or February. You might think that’s not really a big deal, but he said (and it was quick so I hope I get these right) this is the 4th time since 2003 that YVR has received no snow in January and February. Yet, before 2003… it had only happened 4 times in the previous 60 years.
Food for thought.
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