We are only heading into mid-November and Prince George is already well on its way to posting its driest year on record according to Environment Canada.
The current record is from 1921 when 377.9 millimetres of precipitation fell – to put that into context, the average precipitation for a given year in the northern capital is 595.
As of yesterday (Wednesday), a paltry 292 mm has fallen with no large rain or snow dumps on the horizon.
Meteorologist, Armel Castellan told MyPGNow.com in an interview, a major push of the wet stuff or even snow doesn’t seem likely over the next 8-9 weeks.
“So, barring a very wet rest of November and into December, we will likely be in the running for the driest year on record in 2023 from January 1st right through to the end of December.”
“I think we are at least dealing with a top two or top three driest years on record and very likely the driest year on record when we think about the climatology of the next eight or nine weeks here.”
Castellan added PG saw July-like temperatures in May, which set us up very poorly for what turned out to be a record-breaking wildfire season in the Prince George Fire Centre.
“In the month of May of this year, we had extreme warmth and evaporation transporation and dryness very early. Essentially, we were seeing hot July temperatures in May and that really set us up very poorly.”
The findings come after a story was published today (Thursday) where it was noted humanity has lived through the hottest 12 months in at least 125,000 years.
Castellan noted our region, along with most of BC came into what is now considered an extremely strong drought over a year ago, culminating between July and October.
“It didn’t set us up very well for the winter because of course, in the winter for most of the interior, precipitation falls as snow and then you are really not saturating the soil.”
He added the type of global warming or climate change we have become accustomed to has been several decades in the making.
“The northern latitudes in general are warming at a much higher rate than the global average. So, the global average of course includes the equator and the sub-tropics.”
“We have seen our fair share of disasters over the recent years in this province whether its an early freshet leading to an early drought and therefore wildfire evacuations and smoke those are things we have now had to grasp with or have been very difficult situations and we know these things are happening at an increasing rate over the coming decades.”
When asked if potentially having the driest year on record in over a century will lead to yet another unprecedented wildfire season in 2024, Castellan noted this year’s El Nino will have a large impact from about Christmas time to early or mid-spring.
This will likely create conditions where the freezing levels are higher leading to snowpacks in some elevations being less than in a neutral or La Nina year, which PG has experienced over the last three winters.
“Going into the spring, we are not well set up to have overcome the precipitation deficit and to likely have an early freshet or a spring melt from the snows. We are kind of in the position where if you remember in 2019 in the spring we had a very warm and dry spring and it was on the heels of 2017 and 2018, which were both record-breaking wildfire years at the time.”
“And, what happened was Mother Nature threw us a Hail Mary and we caught it and it was in the form of a little bit too much rain because the Chilcotin flood happened but it certainly created the conditions that summer for a non-wildfire season.”
“The deck is stacked and that is the problem. We can’t get Hail Marys from Mother Nature as we saw in 2019 for that particular summer on repeat. We know that climatologically that is unlikely.”
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