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Winter weather average for now

No surprises as far as temperatures, precipitation goes during winter season.

Though there has been plenty of the white stuff drifting from the skies over the last few days, there's nothing close to breaking any records, according to Environment Canada.

It was a White Christmas, with 10.2 centimetres of snowfall on Dec. 24th, continuing on with a brief dusting of 1.2 centimetres on Christmas Day.

Nothing too spectacular about that system, it's kind of your typical low pressure system," said Lisa West, a meteorologist with Environment Canada. "It made landfall over the Washington-Oregon border and travelled through Washington and south of the [B.C.] border, but there was tons of precipitation that made it north of the border and affected pretty much all of southern B.C."

The record snowfall on Christmas Eve is 20.3 set in 1968 while the most amount of snow on Christmas is 17.3 centimetres, set in 1971.

Earlier in December, there were two straight days of major snow dumps; Dec. 4 included 7.4 centimetres, while the following day surpassed that at 9.4 centimetres.

Temperatures have been relatively average as well.

The warmest day of the month was Dec. 4 at 2.7 degrees, while the lowest minimum temperature was Dec. 17 at -27.4. The averages for this month on those two maximums and minimums are -7.3 and -15.3, respectively.

Historically, over a 30-year period, the average daily maximum temperature in December is -3.4 degrees, while the average daily minimum is -11 degrees.

A temperature records were set in December 1975 with a 12.2 degrees daily maximum temperature, while a daily minimum temperature of -40 degrees was set in 1968.

"Throughout December 2016 we've had a wide range of temperatures but no records, thankfully," said West.

Moving forward, West says there is a La Nina pattern that is forecast to continue through to January before a transition to more neutral conditions through February and March.

"We're sort of expecting average, maybe slightly below average temperatures this winter," West said.

 



Trevor Crawley

About the Author: Trevor Crawley

Trevor Crawley has been a reporter with the Cranbrook Townsman and Black Press in various roles since 2011.
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