Environment Canada models pointing to warm, wet spring for PG area

Friday marks the start of a new season in Prince George, as spring officially gets underway tomorrow.

Environment Canada models are pointing to a warmer than normal spring for the Prince George area.

“The further south you go in the province, the better that chance is of those above normal temperatures really being more firmly in place,” said Environment Canada Meteorologist Brian Proctor.

“It does look like it’s going to be a fairly warm spring moving forward at this time, which is supported really be what we’re seeing out in the equatorial pacific at this point.”

From a precipitation standpoint, Proctor said the forecast map is suggesting the area along the Rockies stretching up into the Central Interior is showing a chance of above normal precipitation.

“The closer you get to the elbow, the more enhanced that potential is fore above normal precipitation,” he said.

“What that suggests to me is when we look at what our temperatures are doing, and what the precipitation’s doing, it’s likely to be a fairly convective sort of start to summer, spring start to summer at this point in time moving forward.”

For the winter, Proctor said what the Prince George area saw was fairly normal.

“Our mean temperature over the winter months, so December, January, February, was -5.1, normal is -6.7,” he said.

Proctor added precipitation levels were slightly above normal during the winter as well.

“We recorded 138 millimetres of precipitation at the airport, versus a normal of 123, so maybe 110 per cent of normal precipitation, but we would characterize it as a normal sort of amount.”