The hot weather has resulted in some long-standing temperature records falling of late on Vancouver Island, including one that stood for 121 years in the Victoria Harbour.
With back-to-back record-setting wildfire seasons in our province, June hasn’t cooperated with firefighters, as its usually cloudy and cooler.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Doug Lundquist said June is making the firefighting effort throughout the province even more difficult due to a lack of cloud cover and record heat.
“It alleviates the fears of the fire weather forecasters to a certain extent(cloud and cooler temperatures) and that hasn’t happened this year as much as usual, so where in this really sunny and hot period over the last couple of days on the island. Although we’re expecting a cold front on Thursday, it’s still looking like it’s going to remain above average for temperature through the weekend and into next week.”
The precipitation levels throughout Vancouver Island are way below seasonal and Lundquist said weather stations throughout the island tell a story of extremely dry conditions.
“Comox has had a little over 75 millimetres of rain, we usually have 175, so [we’re experiencing] a huge deficit there, with Victoria at around 90-95 millimetres in the last 90 days, usually we get about 125, so  even the south end of the island is on the dry side.”
On Tuesday, seven temperature records fell throughout the province, including a 121-year record in the Victoria Harbour, which was smashed by nearly seven degrees.
Catalyst Paper, the operators of the Cowichan Weir have reduced flows to four and a half cubic metres a second.
