Prince George and Quesnel were on the cooler side of the weather spectrum during April according to Environment Canada.
The average high last month was four degrees – less than a point below the normal mark for the month, at five.
As far precipitation goes, Meteorologist, Armel Castellan told MyPGNow.com the amount that fell is pretty close to what we usually see.
“It was up at 78% of normal so about 28.1 millimetres fell, the typical high is about 36 – we are shy of normal but still close enough to be considered normal.”
Castellan adds it will take a bit of a small miracle for enough rain to occur during the summer across BC, northern Alberta and, the southern portion of the Northwest Territories in order to avoid a long wildfire season.
Prince George is anticipated to see a gradual warmup following Tuesday with weekend temperatures expected to eclipse the low to mid-20s’.
“The hottest part of that time will be Friday, Saturday, Sunday where the temperatures are going to get up for the first time this year into the mid-20s’, which is about nine or ten degrees above seasonal.”
“It’s not going to be wet for a while. We have maybe the hint of something starting up mid-month but by and large we are dealing with an extremely dry warming situation here from Tuesday until Monday or Tuesday of next week,” added Castellan.
He added the warm spell could be a small taste of what is expected this summer with drought conditions persisting.
“The temperature regime we are seeing is being very consistent not just within the Environment Canada modelling for the next several months but also for the other agencies worldwide has seasonal models and when we compare them all together they are all painting a very similar picture for North America and even for Western Canada that means May, June and, July have a high probability of being above-seasonal.”
“The better part of almost half of BC has the probability of seeing higher than normal temperatures and so that is the latest from a precipitation point of view. We can start to get a bit of a sense of things on a monthly scale and the latest that was issued earlier this week does have a bit of a dry trend for the northern prairies and just getting into the Peace Region and then it has a hint of a wetter signal for Watson Lake and south towards Burns Lake and Vanderhoof.” added Castellan.