A look back at summer 2016

Now that August is over, meteorological summer (June, July, and August) is also over.  Summer 2016 started out a little more unsettled than usual in Victoria, but in the end it turned out to be very nice.

At Victoria Gonzales, there was a total of 41 mm of rain during June, July, and August.  That's a little drier than the 50 mm that Victoria receives on average during the summer, but nothing unusual.  In fact, about 40% of the summers at Victoria Gonzales over the past 118 years have been drier, with the driest summer (1970) receiving just 10.5 mm of rain during June, July, and August.  While this June was a little wetter than normal, July and August were both a little drier.  There were 15 days with measurable precipitation during the summer, which is right on average.

The chart below shows daily rainfall during summer 2016, and compares the cumulative rainfall with the 30-year average.  You can see that June and the first week in July was generally a little wetter than average, but then it was very dry until the last few days in August.  From July 10 to August 27, there was a seven week stretch with just one day and only 1 mm of rain, and from July 23 to August 27, there was a 36-day period with no measurable precipitation.  That's a little longer than the typical drought period that Victoria receives each summer, which averages 28 days.

Daily and cumulative rainfall, 2016 vs 30-year average

The chart below compares Victoria's rainfall during summer 2016 with a number of other locations.  Compared with Victoria Gonzales' 42 mm, the Victoria Airport actually received slightly less rain, at 38 mm.  In Vancouver, there was 105 mm at the Airport and 156 mm downtown at the Harbour (so nearly four times as much rain as Victoria).  Up-Island also had more rain than Victoria, with 115 mm at Nanaimo and 95 mm at Comox.  Rainfall in Seattle was closest to Victoria, although there was still nearly twice as much, with 68 mm.  Finally, I have included Toronto's 133 mm.  There was a lot of coverage in the news about the drought affecting Southern Ontario, so this shows that everything's relative: even with one of the worst droughts in memory, Toronto still received more than three times as much rain as Victoria this summer.

Total rainfall, summer 2016

Now lets talk about temperatures.  The mean temperature for June, July, and August at Victoria Gonzales was 16.4 degrees, substantially higher than the 30-year average of 15.6.  In fact, summer 2016 was the 6th warmest in 119 years of record-keeping at Gonzales.  (Last year's summer, at 16.9 degrees, was the warmest on record.)  June's mean temperature of 15.5 degrees was 1.0 degrees above normal, while July's mean of 16.1 degrees was right on normal.  It was August when things really heated up: the mean temperature of 17.5 was 1.2 degrees above normal and just 0.1 degrees below the all time record.  In fact, at the Victoria Airport it was the hottest August on record.

The chart below shows the daily maximum and minimum temperatures at Victoria Gonzales during summer 2016, compared with the 30-year averages.  You can see that there were spikes of above average temperatures in June and again in August, while temperatures in July stayed very close to the average.  The warmest temperature of the summer was 33.1 degrees on August 19.

Daily maximum and minimum temperatures at Victoria Gonzales , summer 2016