A truck being dug out from the overnight snowfall on January 5, 2022. 49.2 cm of snow fell that day, making it the second-highest snowfall in a single day in Nanaimo's history. (Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Jordan Davidson

La Niña year

Record snowfall and cold snaps highlight wild winter, unstable spring expected

Mar 6, 2022 | 6:52 AM

NANAIMO — With a winter shattering several snowfall and cold weather records, a cooler than average spring on the mid Island with possibly some unstable weather patterns are expected.

Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee said December and into early January was when Nanaimo got the most of our precipitation for the season.

“After the first week of January things started to taper off a bit and we got dryer and dryer into February…Nanaimo area got normal precipitation levels for the winter months (Dec. to end of Feb.), February was drier as a month than usual.”

Nanaimo also broke a few precipitation records this year.

On Jan. 1, 13.4 centimetres of the white stuff fell, good for a new daily record. Then four days later on Jan. 5, 49.2 centimetres of snow fell, which was the second-highest amount of snow to fall in Nanaimo on a single day.

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Temperature-wise, Lee said it was definitely colder around Christmas time into the early weeks of January, which brought with it a string of days below zero weather and heavy amounts of snow.

And while things started to warm up a bit into more average temperatures for the start of February, things quickly dipped below zero again.

“But I think just to remind us of the frequent Arctic air that can come back, we did have another visit of that Arctic air at the end of February. So all in all, the month of December was below-average temperatures, and then January and February were just at normal.”

Nanaimo also saw a couple of single-day records broken for low temperatures. On Dec. 26, the needle dipped to -3.7, and then the following day it went down to -6.4 degrees, record lows for both of those days.

While those lows may not seem so extreme when you compare them to other parts of Canada, for Vancouver Island which sees average lows of 4 for the same time of the year, -6.4 is quite the difference.

Looking ahead to the spring, Lee said we will be continuing into a La Nina pattern for March, April, and May, which generally means below-average temperatures.

“What this means is you can expect some cold days sandwiched in between your normal days that will feel colder than what you would expect in spring. It’s not every day that’s going to be cold but there’s definitely the chance of these cold days that feel even colder for the time of year to occur this spring season.”

As far as how much rain we are going to get, Lee said it’s harder to predict patterns during a La Nina year.

But he says we can expect some more unstable weather for the B.C. coast, including an increase in thunderstorms.

“Sometimes that will bring in small hail…but April showers bring May flowers, so it’s expected we will get some precipitation in the springtime, but it’s not your regular winter storm systems that come almost day-to-day.”

For the next 10 days, Lee said we’ll be heading back to a ridge of high pressure for the weekend which means sunshine, but things will start getting wetter as the week progresses.

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jordan@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @JordanDHeyNow