March sees above average precipitation

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — For the first time in nearly a year, the local airport weather station will this month post a monthly precipitation total, above what Environment Canada records show as the local area norm.

Yesterday, the station added only 1.7 centimetres of snow and 1.7 millimetres of precipitation to the monthly totals.

However, it was the fifth day in the first ten days of the month the area recorded over one centimetre and one millimetre. That’s one more day than the totals for the entire 29 day month of February.

At 25.1, it left the March snowfall total still about three and half centimetres below the monthly average of 28.7, but it was enough to lift the precipitation total to 25.1 millimetres, and already past the March norm of 23.7.

In the previous ten months, the official airport station posts were all below the monthly average; with the exception of December when it recorded 22 millimetres, and matched the norm.

However, the total amounts of snowfall and precipitation yesterday were only about five per cent of the March 10 records, which are also the single day maximums for this month.

They date back more than six decades, and stand at 31.5 centimetres and 31.5 millimetres recorded on March 10, 1954.

Today, the Environment Canada forecast focus has shifted back to warmer temperatures, with highs for each of the next four days, four to seven degrees above yesterday’s high of zero, which is also the local area seasonal norm.

Through the first week of this month El Nino like temperatures of the past two months disappeared, and as a result the mean temperature through yesterday was only -5.6 — a full degree less than the March average.

That’s in sharp contrast to what we experienced in January and February, which gave us mean temperatures this year of -10.3 and -3.1 —two and half, and six and half degrees, above the monthly averages.