As October comes to a close, the arrival of cloudy weather will bring warmer temperatures to Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast, along with rain on Wednesday.
This follows some abnormally chilly weather for this time of the year.
Meteorologist Armel Castellan of Environment and Climate Change Canada says Port Hardy set a new record low last week, dipping to minus 4.6 on Thursday, and while no other communities set new record lows in the past few days, he says some communities recorded temperatures that were among the coldest on record.
“The recent relative cold, which I think is fair to say that it’s an early cold compared to most recent Octobers, when we look back upon the full data base we’ve definitely had colder at this time of year, but top five for a few days in a row is definitely something I think people noted.”
Castellan says temperatures for two-thirds of October were above seasonal for this time of year, but the last few days of the month dropped below normal.
He says the onset of cold weather last week came as an arctic front made its way south and was then joined by a passing low-pressure system that brought snow to higher elevations, and down to sea level in places.
“We had that kind of one-two punch last week, and since then we’ve just been a block pattern with clear skies,” which the region hasn’t been able to emerge from.
The forecast from Environment and Climate Change Canada calls for increasing cloudiness on Tuesday with overnight temperatures from 7° to 10° higher by the end of the week.
