TechGist05

I've mentioned how the Olympic Mountain rain shadow has such a profound impact on Victoria's climate.  Thanks to this effect, the Victoria Gonzales weather station averages only 641 mm of precipitation annually, compared  more than 1000 mm in Metchosin (20 km west) and more than 3500 mm at Port Renfrew (80 km west on the exposed southwest coast of Vancouver Island). Yesterday, we had a good example of a rain shadow.  Here's what the radar looked like around midday yesterday: You can see there is a pretty clear hole in the rain over Victoria, as well as the northeast Olympic Peninsula.  That "hole" persisted for most of the day and there were only a couple of light sprinkles.  Meanwhile, there was steady rain all day up at the Victoria Airport, with rain recorded every hour from 4 am until midnight yesterday. The precipitation totals from yesterday also tell the story.  There was just 1.4 mm of rain at Victoria Gonzales and 1.5 mm of rain at the University o...

You may have seen Victoria described as having a Mediterranean or perhaps a sub-Mediterranean climate.  Is this just local boosterism?   People are sometimes skeptical about these claims of a Mediterranean climate.   After all, while we have great weather in Victoria, it’s not exactly southern California or the Greek Islands.   Despite the skepticism, there is in fact truth to these claims.   The Koppen classification system, developed by Russian German climatologist Wladimir Koppen in the late 19 th century,   is one of the most widely used climate classification systems in the world.   Under the Koppen system, the world’s climates are classified into five main groups: A – Tropical, B – Dry, C – Temperate, D – Continental, and E – Polar.   Victoria falls in the the Temperate group, which is further classified based on the annual precipitation pattern, indicated by the second letter in the classification: s for dr...

El Nino has really started to make its presence felt in California over the past few days, with a series of storms bringing lots of rain to coastal areas - just what you would expect during an El Nino winter.  For Victoria, the conventional wisdom is that we tend to experience winters that are warmer and a bit drier than normal during El Nino years.  This year's El Nino has been touted as the largest one ever recorded, so has our winter weather lived up to the expectation so far?  Not really. First, let's look in a little more detail at how El Nino usually impacts our winters in Victoria.  Over the past 30 winters, there have been 6 moderate or strong El Ninos: 1982-83, 1986-87, 1991-92, 1997-98, 2002-03, and 2009-10. The table below looks at the monthly mean temperature in Victoria for December through March, comparing El Nino winters with the 30-year average.  Each month between December and March has been, on average, warmer during El Nino winters.  The ...

One nice thing about this time of year, not only are the days getting longer but the temperatures are getting warmer.  Statistically, the coldest day of the year in Victoria is December 28, with an average high of 6.5 degrees.  Here we are on January 5, and the average temperature for this date is 7.3 (even though we were below average today).  The gradual warming will continue, with the average high temperature topping 8 degrees by January 26, 9 degrees by February 19, and 10 degrees by March 6. The chart below, which shows the average daily high temperature in Victoria between November and March, illustrates this trend.  You can see that average temperatures fall off quickly in November, then level off during December.  There is a short period in late December when average termperatures reach the lowest level of the year.  There is a relatively sharp increase at the end of December and beginning of January when average temperatures jump from 6.5 to nearly...

While, statistically, Victoria didn't experience a lot of extreme weather in December 2015, it was an interesting month. The mean temperature for the month at Victoria Gonzales was 6.2 degrees, almost a degree warmer than the 30-year average of 5.3.  December saw an average daily high of 8.1 and an average low of 4.3, again warmer than the average high/low of 7.2 / 3.3.  However, these monthly averages mask what was almost two different months when it came to temperature.  The first half of the month was very mild - in fact the second mildest Dec 1-15 on record - with a mean temperature of 8.2 degrees and an average high/low of 10.0 / 6.3.  The second half of the month got much chillier - nearly 2 degrees below average - with a mean temperature of 4.4 and an average high/low of 6.3 / 2.5. The warmest day of the month was 12.8 on December 8.  There were 7 days when the temperature topped 10 degrees, all between Dec. 3 and 11th.  The coldest overnight low of ...

It's New Year's Day, a good time to review the weather we experienced in Victoria during 2015. The most significant feature of the weather in 2015 was the warmth.  2015 was the warmest year on record at Victoria Gonzales, with the recording-keeping going back over 100 years to 1898.  The mean annual temperature was 11.7 degrees compared with the 1981-2010 average of 10.6 degrees.  The old record was 11.5 degrees in 2004.  Ten of the months during 2015 were warmer than normal - only September and November were below average. Some months also broke temperature records.  February 2015 was by far the warmest February on record at Victoria Gonzales, with a mean temperature of 8.9 degrees and an average daily max/min of 11.2 / 6.6.  February was 2.4 degrees above the average of 6.5 and smashed the old record of 8.2 degrees by a wide margin.  In addition, June 2015 tied with June 2003 as the warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 16.1 degrees and an av...

Victoria has a well-known reputation for having the mildest climate in Canada, but fewer people seem to be aware that it is also among Canada's sunniest cities, with an average annual 2,203 hours.  Sunshine was measured at Victoria Gonzales from 1914 to 1988, so this average was calculated based on the most recent 30-year period (1958-88) rather than the standard 30-year climate normal period (currently 1981-2010). The Olympic Mountain rainshadow, discussed earlier for its impact on precipitation in Victora, also affects the amount of sunshine.  As winds flow down over the Olympics, the sinking air warms and dries, often resulting in a hole in the clouds.  In fact this is so prevalent that airplane pilots often use this "hole in the clouds" as part of the visual navigation in the region around Victoria. Victoria is the sunniest city in B.C. and one of the sunniest cities in Canada.  Compared with 2,203 hours at Victoria Gonzales, the Victoria Airport averages 2,109 h...

Victoria only gets about 20 cm of snow annually - the least of any city in Canada.  Even areas nearby get considerably more snow.  For example, both the Victoria Airport (25 km north of the city) and Vancouver Airport get nearly 40 cm of snow annually - roughly double Victoria.  It is very common for Vancouver and up-Island communities to get snow when there is none in Victoria.  In fact, there will often be snow in Langford and the Saanich Peninsula (where the Victoria Airport is located) while there is none in the core area of Victoria, especially those areas near the moderating influence of the Strait of Juan de Juca.  Below is a photo of the Legislative Buildings near downtown Victoria taken on February 23, 2014.  While there is clearly no snow downtown, the Victoria Airport recorded 21 cm of snow that day! December is the snowiest month in Victoria, and accounts for nearly half of the annual total.  It should be noted that because snow is quite ra...

Precipitation is another key aspect of Victoria's climate - and one that makes it quite unique among places along the B.C. coast - thanks to the rainshadow effect.  The east coast of Vancouver Island as well as the Gulf Islands, are in the rainshadow of the Vancouver Island mountains.  Moisture from the Pacific is dropped in abundant amounts on the west coast of Vancouver Island as the air lifts up over the mountains.  As the air flows back down to the east coast lowlands of Vancouver Island, it tends to warm and dry out, resulting in much less rain.  Victoria is unique because it is also in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.  The Olympics are higher than the mountains on Vancouver Island and the resulting rainshadow effect is stronger. Even though Victoria is on the edge of the Olympic rainshadow, this still results in much less rain than other areas of Vancouver Island or the Gulf Islands.  This is especially true around the sout...

As with the average temperatures, the extreme temperatures in Victoria tend to be not so extreme in Victoria.   Victoria Gonzales averages 10.8 days annually when the temperature drops to 0 or below - by far the least for any city in Canada.  By comparison, Victoria Airport - located away from the Strait of Juan de Fuca in an area prone to frost - averages 46 days annually with freezing temperatures.  Vancouver Airport averages 40.9 days annually with freezing temperatures.  In the past 100 years, there have been 5 winters at Victoria Gonzales when the temperature did not fall below 0: 1925/26, 1939/40, 1991/92, 1999/2000, and 2002/03.  The median lowest temperature each winter is -4.8.   The coldest temperature ever recorded at Victoria Gonzales was -15.6 on December 29, 1968.  However, temperatures like that are rare and getting rarer.  In fact, there have been no temperatures below -10 recorded in Victoria since December 1990.  In the past...

I thought I would start out this blog by describing key aspects of Victoria's climate.  Of course, a major element of any climate is temperature, so I will start there.  The climate statistics I quote here are all based on 1981-2010 30-year averages for Victoria Gonzales. A key feature of Victoria's climate - and one that distinguishes it from most other places in Canada - is its mildness.  The average annual temperature at Victoria Gonzales is 10.6 degrees, among the warmest places in Canada.  What's really unique - at least in Canada - is how little this varies throughout the year.  The coldest month on the year in Victoria is December, with a mean temperature of 5.3 degrees, while the warmest month is August, with a mean temperature of 16.3.  That is a difference of just 11 degrees between the coldest month of the year and the warmest.  By comparison, this difference is 14 degrees for Vancouver, 27 degrees for Toronto, and 36 degrees for Winnipeg. V...

One of my pet peeves is that the official weather recording site for Victoria is located at the Victoria International Airport - which is actually in North Saanich, 25 km north of Victoria. This would be okay if the climate at the airport was representative of Victoria, but it really isn't. This partly goes back to the rainshadow effect. The core area of Greater Victoria (particularly the City of Victoria, Oak Bay, and the southeastern part of Saanich) is much more affected by the Olympic Mountain rainshadow than the Westshore or the Saanich Peninsula (where the airport is located). In addition, the moderating effect of the Strait of Juan de Fuca means that the core area (especially those parts near the Strait) tend to be milder (warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer) than the Saanich Peninsula. So if not the Airport site, then what weather recording site should be used to represent Victoria? The Gonzales weather station used to be Victoria's official recording site, and ...

Victoria's climate is very unique in Canada. It's well known as the mildest city in Canada, but what really makes it stand apart from other parts of coastal British Columbia is its location in a double rainshadow of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Mountains. As a result, Victoria gets much less rain and snow, and significantly more sunshine than other places in coastal B.C. In fact, among major cities in Canada, only those in the southern Prairies get less precipitation and more sunshine than Victoria. Just to highlight the mild part of Victoria's climate, I have included a picture taken on January 23, 2010 of some daffodils in full bloom here in Victoria. There's not too many places in Canada where you would see that in January!