October was a “normal” month in Prince George according to Environment Canada.
“When we look back at it, there’s really two different Octobers,” said Environment Canada Meteorologist Alyssa Charbonneau.
“We had our first half of the month which was dominated by some pretty warm conditions, we set high-temperature records early in the month. Then there’s the latter half of October where we saw that cold air move in, temperatures were well below normal. When you average all of that out, it looks like we had a pretty normal month of October, temperature-wise.”
She said October saw an average temperature of 4.7 degrees, compared to the normal of 4.5.
“That puts it right in that ‘normal’ category, which really isn’t exactly how I would describe this month,” she said.
“It illustrates how sometimes these monthly climate statistics kind of hide the finer details.”
Charbonneau added this past October was drier than normal.
“We saw 19.4 millimetres of precipitation total, the normal is 63.3, so that’s about 31 per cent of normal,”
“It did rank as the ninth driest October for Prince George going back to 1912.”
To start November, Charbonneau said Prince George is expected to receive our first snowfall of the year tomorrow. (Thursday)
“We’re expecting that to arrive late tomorrow afternoon, and continue through the evening,”
“Amounts right now are in that five-to-ten centimetre range for the Prince George area.”
She added that south into the Cariboo, there is a risk of freezing rain with the system.
“For the next week which is of course where we have the most confidence, we are seeing this wetter pattern, and temperatures that are more seasonal,”
“Daytime highs of around plus-three, plus-four, and overnight lows dropping down below freezing, which means with some precipitation in the forecast we could be seeing a mix of that rain and flurries, that fall transition where you can go back and forth between the two.”
For the whole of November, Charbonneau said their climate models are anticipating a normal November temperature-wise, but it’s unclear if it’s going to be wetter or drier.
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