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Nanaimo the brunt of a wild weekend
Here’s the picture at Nanoose Bay right now. It’s been a crazy weekend with snow, fail, slush and hail falling. Nanaimo has got the worst of it on Sunday as I’ve had multiple reports of nasty storms featuring snow and hail.
It’s quite the end to winter, or at least getting closer to the equinox toward the end of this month.
The big news is that we can expect a last blast of snow on the East side of the Island Monday morning.
Calm and Sunny week ahead – But expect chilly foggy mornings
After the last of the weather clears out on Monday afternoon we should have a pretty nice week ahead of us. No precipitation is expected until Thursday and even then it looks pretty minor.
We should see some spring sunshine in the afternoons but the nights and mornings will be cold. Frost will happen Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as we get down to around -5ºC on Wednesday morning as the coldest.
Snowpack slightly better but still 50% of normal on Vancouver Island and extremely low BC-wide.
The commentary for March 1 is out for the current Snowpack conditions. Things have improved with these last few storms over the last days of February, but it has not brought us close to normal.
Here’s the latest provincial graph:
We have at least moved away from the historically low areas and into the 10th percentile, but that’s still extremely low for this time of year and much lower than this time last year.
The snow measurements show a similar picture for Vancouver Island.
The Island as a whole is at 50% of normal. Wolf Creek in Strathcona is doing the best at 62% but Jump Creek is off the grip with no measurements, and Heather Mountain recovered to only 37% after dipping as low as 21% of normal. Mt Arrowsmith is just above 52% thanks to the recent snowfall.
There is a chance we see a little more accumulation mid-month if we get the rainfall that is projected next weekend but as the Commentary mentions, by this time of the year, BC has received 80% of its annual snowfall. Time is running out.
Yes, Fire Season is unofficially here.
You can see it on the BC Wildfire map. There are multiple fires listed as “under control” mostly from last year. One newly discovered fire — which is also likely a zombie from last year — is “being held”.
Summary next post
Expect the February (Leap Year!) Summary in the next post and podcast.
See you soon!