Weather Appreciation

[Queen K]

Yup! I need the cool down, the plants needed it, and now I'm ready for again.
Tomorrow preferrably.

[Queen K]

And we've got the back, as wished for.

Yes, one happycamper now.

[tsayta]

[quote="Glacier"]June is typically the wettest month of the year in Kelowna, It's the only month where the monthly average precipitation exceeds 40 mm, but even for June this month is a very wet.

Here are the totals for June thus far for all stations within 200 km of Kelowna. Notice that only the two bolded places have not yet exceeded the monthly average. Kelowna and Winfield are already at twice the normal amount... and the month is not over yet!
Red Lake (163 km away) = 127.3 mm

How on earth do you get stats for red lake?

[tsayta]

check out the radar... it just started here.

currentradar.jpg

Cumungala, each year is different. Osoyoos (especially in August) is often the hottest place in Canada.[/quote]

Glacier, where do you get this radar view from? Is it a subscription that you must pay for? I like this one

[Glacier]

Anyone can get stats for Red Lake since there is a weather station there.

The radar map comes from the Wunderground website, and is available to everyone. They are using Environment Canada's data, but making it look more pretty.

As an aside, it should be pointed out that as the number of Environment Canada weather stations have tanked since the massive cuts in 1997, the number of backyard weather stations has continued to grow. At wunderground.com, you or I could have our own weather station streaming online. This is far better in many respects than EC's stations that update every hour because some of these ones update every 5 seconds. If you have a huge storm drop the temperature 10 degrees, the Wunderground stations will instantaneously show this drop. while Environment Canada (and theweathernetwork) will not show this change for up to an hour later.

In addition, these stations often show how much precipitation is falling (in mm/hour).

The downside to all this is that not everyone is using the same technology. eg. some have thermometers with aspirators and some don't. These are basically little fans that circulate the air to help mitigate against the effects of radiant heating. Another problem with these weather stations is that most of them don't measure frozen precipitation. It costs $7,500 for a weather station that measures snowfall (and I'm not aware of any backyard ones in the Okanagan) compared to $750 +/- for one that measure rainfall.

In the Okanagan, there are far more wunderground weather stations online than EC stations. Another site called FarmWest also has some private weather stations, but is geared more for agricultural purposes.

ETA: WunderMap®.

[tsayta]

If we are seeing winters that are milder with more precipitation, could that mean it takes longer into the summer for the winter snow accumulation to melt? If the summers are getting milder, could this also result in delay to that snow melt? If these statements are true, is this not the beginning of a ew period of glaciation and eventually ice age? I understand that all previous ice ages began exactly this way. In fact don't they cycle every10_20 thousand years and we are at the height of an interglacial period?

[Glacier]

Yesterday was one of the wettest days in a long time over in the Thompson and Fraser Canyons.



The most precipitation Ashcroft has ever had on July 23rd was 9 mm back in 1941. Yesterday, they had 29 mm. (records span 1913 - 1985, and then start up again two years ago).

Remember how Kelowna was 260% of normal last month? Well, with a week still to go this month, Lytton is already at 430% of normal for July precipitation! The normal amount of precipitation in July is 14 mm; this July has seen 62 mm.

Yesterday's precipitation

Clinton: 41 mm
Lillooet: 35 mm
Ashcroft: 29 mm
Lytton: 23 mm
Merritt: 19 mm

Penticton: 2 mm
Kelowna: 1 mm
Vernon: 0 mm

[Lady tehMa]

*yikes*

I can't tell you how happy I am to see blue sky out there.

Sounds like the Kootenays have been slammed with some fairly unusual weather recently - any comments Glacier?

[Glacier]

It was mentioned briefly on the last page that Castlegar in particular has been pretty hard hit by rain this month. The worst of it saw 2 inches (50 mm) of rain fall in an hour and a half. So far they have had over 100 mm of rain this month. Last month they had twice this amount!

As the following graph shows, Castlegar is on average quite a bit wetter than the Okanagan and Fraser Canyon, so even though they have had twice as much rain as Lytton, Lytton is more above "normal" this month. June is a different story (see last page).

Month by month precipitation averages art various BC locations.

[Lady tehMa]

Glacier, does your data track wind and frequency/severity of storms? The Okanagan isn't normally a super windy place, but I'm noticing that it seems to be more so this year (usually the air is quite still and I'm perishing for a breeze).

[Glacier]

That's a really good question. A quick check of the average wind speed at the Kelowna airport this July was 9.5 km/h compared to the average of 6.2 km/h. The Penticton airport wind speed was 10.2 km/h last month compared to the average of 9.2 km/h.

Yes, your observation is indeed correct. It has been unusually windy in the Okanagan.

On the plus side, Kelowna was at least warmer than Fort Nelson in July! In June Fort Nelson, the place with the coldest winters in BC, was actually warmer than Kelowna.

ETA: a new graph showing comparing some of the hottest spots around BC.

[Glacier]

Last night I was playing around with Google maps and made very pretty map to show you all... annual hours of sunshine... https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=20 ... ,39.506836

[Lady tehMa]

hey, very nice map!

[Glacier]

Remember how wet June was in the Okanagan? And that the Similkameen valley was relatively dry? What a difference a month makes. The Okanagan was drier than normal with 20 to 25mm of precipitation falling. Meanwhile, the Similkameen valley was very wet. Princeton had 82mm - almost 3 times the regular amount of rainfall. Hedley wasn't much better.

Castlegar was once again very wet with 117mm of rain. The only places wetter were the North Thompson communities of Darfield and Blue River, along with one spot on the Queen Charlottes... oops, I mean Haida Gwaii.

The driest place in BC was the Bella Coola valley where a mere 7mm fell.

July was also hotter than average in the Okanagan, but amazingly, the average temperature in Fort Nelson thus far this summer is still higher than the temperature has been in Kelowna to date! Not bad when you consider the fact the Fort Nelson has had the coldest winter in BC 39 of the past 42 years!

[maple leaf]

For anyone who thinks it's toooo hot,watch this.


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=xkk7DX0l95A&Lid=12