Twenty two days of April showers should soon bring May flowers.
According to the Castlegar weather office, only eight days had no measurable rain, and led the month to being the wettest April in 21 years.
“Measurable rain was recorded 22 of the possible 30 days,” forecaster Ron Lakeman noted in a month-end summary. “As a series of Pacific systems continued to push across southern B.C.”
Total rainfall exceeded 84 millimetres, which is 42 per cent greater than the normal amount of precipitation that usually falls during April. However, only one daily record was broken with 9.2 mm of rainfall on April 6.
Cool temperatures were another atypical feature this April.
Lakeman notes that the mean (average) daily temperature was 2.1 degrees cooler than the usual.
The coldest day was -3.7 C on April 4. However, that doesn’t near the lowest temperature on record, which was a frigid – 7.5 C on April Fools’ Day in 1979.
The warmest day was April 22, when the mercury neared 20 C.
Notably the warmest monthly mean ever recorded, was last year. The average April temperature is 8.8 C, but in 2016, that figure rose by almost 4 degrees to 12.2 C.
The hottest April day on record was in 1980 when the temperature rose to 28.2 C on April 27.
