By Adam Berls

winter weather

Mild, dry winter leading to less snowpack, could cause trouble in the spring and summer

Jan 2, 2024 | 2:25 PM

PRINCE GEORGE — A winter for the record books. Prince George has broken a number of temperature records in the last few days, with two 100-year temperature records being broken. The normal mean temperature for Prince George in December is -7.2, but in December 2023 the mean temperature was only -1.2.

Any snow that has fallen has quickly disappeared, and there are a couple of reasons why we have been experiencing a mild winter so far.

“It’s really two phenomena that are sort of working in conjunction with each other. One is the very strong El Nino that’s occurring out in the Pacific Ocean at this point in time. And the second is we’ve had a really dominant upper ridge of high pressure over western Canada through much of the fall and early portion of the winter.” – Brian Proctor, Meteorologist, Environment & Climate Change Canada

Much of this warm air is situated over the interior of B.C. including the North as well.

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“What that’s really done is brought a lot of warm air ahead of those frontal systems up over the south coast of British Columbia and the southern interior. And that warm air continues to move northwards as those systems track up the coast towards the Alaska panhandle.” – Brian Proctor, Meteorologist, Environment & Climate Change Canada

With the warmer and drier conditions, Proctor says that the current snowpack is reduced and that we are going to need a strong snowpack to alleviate some of the drought concerns going into the fall and winter.

Proctor says that the upper ridge of high pressure situated over the Interior of B.C. is shifting further to the west, which is allowing cooler, more seasonal like air to descend from the Yukon and Northwest Territories into the Interior. Therefore, we could see a better chance of precipitation.

Environment Canada is forecasting snow for the rest of this week and cooler temperatures starting on Friday.

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X: @AdamBerls

Email: Adam.Berls@pattisonmedia.com