Environment Canada says an unseasonable cool air mass over southern B.C. has broken minimum temperature records, including one dating back about 70 years.
The forecaster said temperatures fell to 4 C in the Trail area on Sunday, breaking the record of 4.4 C set in 1954.
Greater Victoria, while cool, steered clear of the record books on Sunday, with a maximum temperature of 16.5 C and a minimum of 9.9 C at Victoria International Airport, said Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor.
“This time of year the average high should be around 19.3 and the average low is 9.4,” he said. “So we were a little cooler on the max temperature and pretty much almost right on the average low.”
In the Bella Bella area, the minimum of 3.9 C broke the 4 C record set 10 years ago.
Records for low daily maximum temperatures were also set, with the Kelowna area reaching just 13.3 C, breaking the 15 C record for that day set in 1906.
Penticton and Princeton also matched records established in 1939, while other low daily maximum records were set in Summerland, Sparwood, Nakusp, Merritt and Kamloops.
Lytton was also a record breaker, getting to just 15.2 C, a far cry from the all-time Canadian heat record of 49.6 C set on June 29, 2021, just a day before a wildfire killed two people and destroyed much of the village.
Summer officially starts on Thursday and will come on the heels of what Proctor called an “unsettled” spring on the Island.
“We’ve been a little cool, just below normal temperature-wise,” he said. “We’ve some few showers floating around, as well.”
Overall, the precipitation has been hit-and-miss “but it’s definitely helped to alleviate some of the overall drought concerns,” Proctor said.
“It’s really helped from a forest-fire point of view,” he said. “It’s really not doing a lot to alleviate long-term drought concerns, but it’s damping things down a bit.”
Proctor is calling for a nice, sunny day on Thursday to mark the beginning of summer, with temperatures in the low to mid-20s in the Capital Regional District.
That temperature range should persist for a few days before a cooler day on Sunday, Proctor said.
