A bit of snow and fluctuating daytime temperatures caused some icy and slushy conditions on Nanaimo roads in Feb. (Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Jordan Davidson

Febrrrruary

‘Coming in like a lion:’ cooler start to March expected after chilly end to February

Mar 1, 2023 | 4:34 PM

NANAIMO — While February was a dryer than usual month for the Harbour City, but what we lacked in precipitation we made up for in cold weather.

Environment Canada meteorologist Trevor Smith said the average temperature for the entire month was three degrees Celsius, whereas the regular average for the month is 4.3 degrees.

“We had a fairly mild start to the month, maybe the first two, three weeks, and then we had that colder Arctic air coming in at the end of the month, and that’s kind of what tipped things on the balance of being a colder than average February.”

Nanaimo also broke a couple of daily cold weather records, including on Feb. 28 with a low temperature of -12.6 degrees.

“That broke the old record of -8.9 set way back in 1936. Also, during the day on February 24, the high was -0.2 so that was basically the coldest daytime temperature for any February 24. Not an all-time monthly record though, just records for the day.”

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But it still got a little colder.

The Nanaimo Airport registered a temperature of -12.9 on the morning of Feb. 24, another record for the day. The mark occurred around the same time weather stations in the city itself were registering around minus five.

“The airport is a little bit inland so it does tend to be colder than Nanaimo proper which is a little bit closer to the water and kind of more of a moderating maritime influence.”

Precipitation-wise, we did see a few fairly significant snow events, but Smith said it wasn’t even half the amount of water the mid-Island usually gets at this time.

“We’re looking at around maybe 55 millimetres total precipitation for the month, and the normal is 126 millimetres. It was like around 42 per cent of normal, so it was a fairly dry month when we look at February overall.”

Looking ahead into the month, Smith said the cooler-than-average trend is likely to continue for the first week or two of March at least, with a few smaller weather systems heading towards Nanaimo Wednesday night into Thursday, as well as another one on Friday evening.

“Those look like they’ll have fairly low snow levels with them, I think Nanaimo itself will see rain, but if you’re driving through the passes across the hump towards Port Alberni, you might watch out for snow over the higher levels. In terms of seeing snow at the higher levels, I guess you could say March is coming in like a lion.”

Hopefully, March will go out like a lamb, but Smith said it’s too early to tell.

“Precipitation, no strong signal there, probably looks sort of average but I would say for the first two weeks of March, maybe even for the whole month, we’ll probably be trending slightly below where we should be for seasonal averages.”

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