February weather — cooler, double normal snowfall
By Nelson Daily Staff
If people thought there was a lot more snow falling than in a normal February, they were right said Ron Lakeman, Weather Forecaster for the Southeast Fire Centre in the monthly synopsis.
“Typical of a La Nina winter and very similar to February 2017, February 2018 was cooler than normal and relatively eventful with more than double the normal snowfall,” he said.
“Occasional light amounts of mixed precipitation was recorded while temperatures were in the milder than seasonal category at times as a series of relatively weak disturbances pushed across the West Kootenay during the initial half of the month.”
Lakeman said a more significant system tracked southeastward from the north coast for 12 centimetres of snow during the night of February 13th.
He said a new record daily maximum temperature of 10.9 degrees was set on February 8th.
Lakeman said there was a modified Arctic air mass pushed west of the Rockies for colder temperatures during the third week of the month, more so the February 17th-24th.
Some moderation occurred during the final few days of the month. Record daily minimum temperatures of -20.7, -16.0 and -19.2 degrees were set on February 19th, 20th and 23rd, respectively.
“A Pacific system in combination with the advancing Arctic air mass resulted in 20.3 centimetres of snow on February 17th,” he said.
“Moderate to strong winds followed on February 18th. Another 11.8 centimetres of snow fell during the night of February 28th.”
He said the mean monthly temperature was 2.5 degrees cooler than normal while total snowfall (68.1 centimetres) was 265% of normal but when combined with the monthly rainfall of 9.0 millimetres the total amount of precipitation during the month was very near 100% normal.
Early forecast from Environment Canada sees the wet weather to continue through the first part of March, with overnight temperatures hovering around 0 C.
