The Mild Streak Continues in March

I'm a little late, but I'm finally getting around to looking back at last month's weather!

The mild streak continued in March, with a mean temperature of 9.1 degrees, compared with a 30-year March average of 7.8.  That's warm enough to make it into the top 10 warmest Marches in the past 118 years at Victoria Gonzales.  The average daily maximum and minimum this March were 11.9 and 6.2, compared with the  normal 11.0 and 4.8.  The warmest temperature was 18.0 on the 30th and the coolest was 3.2 on the 16th.

The chart below compares the daily maximum and minimum temperatures this month with the 30-year averages.  You can see that temperatures were generally above average, particularly at the end of the month.  The daily minimum temperature was above average for 23 of 31 days in March.

March 2016 Temperatures in Victoria

March 2016 was quite close to average in terms of precipitation, with 56 mm compared with the average of 50 mm.  The chart below compares the daily and cumulative precipitation for the month with the average cumulative precipitation.  You can see that the month started out quite wet, and by mid-month we were were at almost double our normal precipitation.  However, the second half of the month was dry so were were only slightly above normal by the end of the month.  There was measurable precipitation on 16 days, slightly more than the normal of 15 days.  The wettest day was the 9th, with 15 mm of rain.

March 2016 Daily Precipitation

The chart below compares Victoria's total precipitation in March 2016 with some nearby locations.  As is typical, Victoria was a lot drier.  Compared with Victoria (as measured at the Gonzales weather site),  the Victoria Airport had just over double the rainfall - 119 mm vs 56 mm.  Nanaimo was particularly wet this March, with 247 mm - more than four times as much rain as Victoria. Vancouver, with 198 mm had almost four times as much rain while Seattle, with 140 mm, had about 2.5 times as much rain as Victoria.

March was also another month with no snow in Victoria, which also means another winter with no snow.  We have now had four winters in a row with no snow.  The last time Victoria saw snow accumulate on the ground (more than 1 cm) was January 2012.