Winter precipitation this year less than third of local average

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Even though we’re still nearly a month away from the first day of spring, it could already be time for farmers and ranchers to start being concerned about the lack of snowfall and overall precipitation this winter.

With only a week left in February, the El Nino conditions have resulted in only 61 centimetres of snow since the first of October.

That’s less than one third of what Environment Canada lists as the local area norm of 136.9 for the five month period extending through February.

The precipitation story for the same period is a little better, but the total of 81.6 millimetres is still less than two-thirds of the five month average of 126.4 millimetres.

None of the monthly snowfall totals for each the last five months has exceeded or even matched the norms, and at the airport weather station only the December post of 22 centimetres even came close to the monthly average of 26.8 centimetres.

The December precipitation average did match the last December, by posting a total of 22 millimetres, but the other four monthly totals were all below the norms.

The worst snowfall month was October with only 2.8 centimetres, less than 15 per cent of the norm — but a rainfall post, of 21.6 millimetres, topped the monthly average of 13.3. That pushed the precipitation total to 24.4, and less than seven millimetres, from the norm of 30.8 millimetres.

With only a week to go, this month has been the driest one of the aforementioned period with only 6.2 centimetres of snow and 7.4 millimetres of precipitation.

The former is less than a quarter of the February norm of 25.3 and the latter still less than half of the monthly average of 19.

What it all means is this: We’re now only a week away from finishing a tenth consecutive month without exceeding the local area normal amount of precipitation, and the recorded ten month total of 240.4 millimetres, is only 60 per cent of a 401 millimetre average for the period.