Despite a few major storms passing over our area last month, Nanaimo saw less than half of its regular rainfall in March. (Image Credit: Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Jordan Davidson

dry march

March storms drench much of coastal B.C., save the Nanaimo area

Apr 1, 2026 | 2:25 PM

NANAIMO — Despite an atmospheric river storm system settling over Vancouver Island, last month was drier than usual.

Much of eastern Vancouver Island received around half of its average precipitation for March, with Nanaimo seeing 52.8 millimetres of rain, around 47 per cent of normal.

Meteorologist with Environment Canada Ken Dosanjh, said our area was spared the worst of the atmospheric river event, which hit coastal B.C. mid-month and lingered for a few days.

“We saw heavy amounts of rain, this multi-pulsed, long-duration atmospheric river over this multi-day stretch, which is quite rare, especially in March. That brought rain to many stations. For quite a few stations, bringing their total normal monthly precipitation over a five-six day stretch.”

Other coastal B.C. communities were hit much harder than Nanaimo, with the Vancouver International Airport recording 121 per cent of its normal rainfall.

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Temperature-wise, Nanaimo’s average for March was 6.5 degrees Celcius, only a slight increase from the normal average of 6.3.

Dosanjh said despite the atmospheric river bringing higher-than-average temperatures to the area, a colder-than-usual streak near the end of the month helped balance things out.

“It’s important to be mindful that these atmospheric rivers they meander and they fluctuate, so when you look at an event like the end of January, where we saw an atmospheric river come through, it brought heavy rain to areas like east Vancouver (Island), Courtenay and parts of Comox, so that caused some flooding concerns where again, typically you wouldn’t see that kind if impact for areas like east Vancouver Island.”

Daily low temperature records were broken on the north Island, with Port Hardy reaching -3.1 overnight on March 30th, beating its record of -2.8 from 1954.

The Tofino area also saw a low temperature record broken the same morning when it dropped to -3.2, a full degree lower than the previous record set in 1905.

Dosanjh said a storm system currently sitting over coastal B.C. will bring a bit more rain on Wednesday and Thursday, but is expected to dry up from there, with sunshine and higher-than-normal temperatures expected for the Easter weekend.

While he can’t say exactly how warm it’ll be or how much rain we’ll get, their weather models are predicting a high chance April will be warmer and drier than usual.

“It’s kind of these events added up that kind of make that April story, and in this case, it’s one that is predicted to be above seasonal compared to average.”

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