It may feel like summer hasn’t really arrived yet, but we’re actually coming off a fairly typical June.
Environment Canada meteorologist, Armel Castellan, said the average temperatures stayed relatively close to normal in the Comox Valley, Campbell River, and Port Hardy.
“Comox, at 15.8 degrees (for its average temperature) was only 0.3 degrees above normal and then Campbell River, 14.4 (degrees) is only 0.3 degrees colder than normal,” Castellan said. “(In) Port Hardy, the mean temperature was 12.1 degrees and their normal is 12.3, so essentially the same. And then, Powell River saw 14.7 degrees as their average mean temperature and their daily (normal) was 15.8, maybe a little bit cooler there because of slightly more continental mass.”
And after a drier than normal spring, Castellan said “we were a little bit shaking in our boots.”
“We were thinking of it in a drought and wildfire context and not so much from a flood and freshet context. The context has really switched.”
That’s because it was a rainier-than-usual month across Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast.
The Comox Valley saw 69 millimetres of the wet stuff last month, which calculates to 162 per cent of its normal amount of precipitation for June. That makes it the 20th wettest June on record in the valley, dating back to 1894.
“June is a fairly dry month, not the driest, but only 43 mm usually shows up (in the valley) in a typical June,” Castellan said.
Compare that to last June, when the Comox Valley only saw 12 mm of rain, which was only 27 per cent of its average for the month.
It was a similar story in Campbell River, which was drenched with 81 mm, which was 129 per cent of its normal amount of 63 mm for June.
That was good for the 14th wettest June on record in Campbell River, dating back to 1936.
On a bright note, Castellan believes we’re turning a corner in both temperatures and dry conditions.
“It’s still going to be a little bit cooler, here, for the next little bit but we are going to edge towards warmer, or at least closer to normal if just by a couple degrees off, and then maybe even surpass it by the time we get into the second week of July,” he said. “It doesn’t look extraordinarily wet. We’re still dealing with this (low pressure) trough that’s really affected us since late May, lasted most of the way through June, and is still continuing here for the first few days of July.”
He said while it’s going to be unsettled throughout the next couple of weeks, we likely won’t see any big rain events on the horizon “which is at least one door you can close.”
