Snow returns to Victoria after 1,785 snow-free days!

After a very long snow drought, snow finally returned to Victoria in December 2016.

It started with a light dusting on December 5 - about 2 cm, but not enough to cover the grass.  Then on December 9, Victoria received about 5 cm of snow - its first significant snowfall since 2012. Here's a photo of the Inner Harbour area taken on my way to work, around 7:30 that morning:

As is usually the case in Victoria, the snow didn't last long.  By the afternoon, the melting was well under way.  Here is another photo, taken about 4:45 pm, on my way home from work, and you can see that the grass is already showing on the lawn in front of the Legislature.  By the next morning, the snow had all melted.

When I refer to significant snow, I mean more than 2-3 cm and enough to completely cover the ground (and the grass).  The last time we had snow covering the ground in downtown Victoria was January 17-20, 2012.  That's 1,785 days without significant snow on the ground!  While official "snow depth on the ground" measurements were only made at Victoria Gonzales from 1955 to 1988, I'm pretty sure that is a record for Victoria -  nearly five years with no significant snow on the ground!

I noticed that some of the local media were referring to 1,000 days without significant snow, but they were basing that on the "official" record out at the Victoria Airport.  Unfortunately, the Airport gets much more snow than downtown - more than twice as much.  There was quite a lot of snow out at the Airport back in February 2014 (1,000 days prior to the recent snow) but Victoria did not get that snow.  In fact, here is a photo I took on February 23, 2014, a day when there was 21 cm of snow recorded out at the Victoria Airport:

In our most recent bout of snow, we did receive a couple more very light dustings (less than 1 cm) on December 12, and again on December 17.  But really, we ended up with just one day with actual snow on the ground (December 9).  That's sure a lot better than some areas up-Island and in the Vancouver suburbs, where there was almost  continuous snow on the ground for up to 3 weeks!  We are very lucky in Victoria, that so often we can be snow free when there is snow all around us.  To illustrate, here is a map from NOAA showing snow cover in our area on December 16.  You can see that the core area of Victoria has no snow, while there is snow up on the Saanich Peninsula, the Gulf Islands, all the rest of Vancouver Island, and the Vancouver area.

Fall 2016 - October and November in Victoria

It's been a while since I've posted, so I'm trying to get caught up.  I'll start with a brief look at the weather in Victoria for October and November 2016.

October: a bit milder and much wetter than normal

October was a bit warmer than average, with a mean temperature of 11.5 degrees at Victoria Gonzales versus the 30-year average of 11.1.  The mean daily high and low temperatures for the month were 14.0 / 8.9 versus the normal average of 13.9 / 8.2, so the daily high temperatures averaged only very slightly above the normal while the daily low temperature was more significantly above the normal.  The warmest temperature during the month was 18.0 on October 5th while the coldest was 5.6 on the 12th.

October was also wetter than normal, with 116 mm of rain, nearly 50% more that the normal of 79 mm.  The wettest day was 21.2 mm on October 20th.  Overall, there was measurable rain on 21 days during October, much more than the normal 12.4 days.  While it was wet at Victoria Gonzales, it was much wetter up at the Victoria Airport in North Saanich, which saw 234 mm of rainfall during the month - double what Victoria proper received.

November: record-breaking warmth and fairly dry

November 2016 was very mild in Victoria - in fact it was the warmest November ever recorded at Victoria Gonzales.  The mean temperature for the month was 9.9 degrees -  more than two degrees above the 30-year average of 7.6 degrees.  The old record for November was 9.3 degrees, recorded in both 1949 and 1954, so November 2016 topped that by a fairly large margin.  The mean daily high and low temperatures for the month were 11.9 / 7.7 versus the normal average of 9.9 / 5.4, so both daytime highs and overnight lows were well above normal.  The warmest temperature during the month was 16.8 degrees on November 8th while the coldest was 4.0 on the 27th.

November 2016 was also significantly drier than normal, with just 78 mm of rain - nearly 40% less than the normal of 127 mm.  However, there was measurable rainfall on 20 days during the month, which is actually a bit higher than the average of 18 days - so quite a lot of rainy days but not much heavy rain.  The wettest day was 16 mm on November 5th.  As in October, November was much wetter up at the Airport, which received 176 mm of rainfall during the month - considerably more than double what was recorded at Victoria Gonzales.  The pattern this month seemed to be a lot of days with just very light rainfall in Victoria - much less than in surrounding areas.