Canada's Top Ten Weather Stories for 2013

It is hard to imagine a better month of weather along the Pacific coast than in July 2013, which featured continuous sunshine and not a single drop of rain in either Vancouver or Victoria. The long stretch of perfect weather actually began around the first day of summer on June 21 thanks to a massive ridge of high pressure that sat stationary over the West coast and relentlessly pumped cloudless desert air from the southwest United States into British Columbia. On the south coast and in the BC Interior, daily temperatures soared in late June with little cooling during the short summer nights. Several stations set record warm overnight lows, including 16.5°C at Vancouver and 15.9°C at Victoria on June 29 that eclipsed records set in 2008. And on June 28, afternoon temperatures soared above 42°C in Kamloops, Lytton and Osoyoos.

July was Vancouver’s sunniest on record with almost 411 hours of bright sunshine, surpassing the 388-hour record set in 1985 (sunshine recordings began in 1953). Further, “Raincouver” set a record for its driest July, having never gone an entire month without at least a trace of rain (i.e. less than 0.2 mm). Even a July with only traces of rain is relatively rare with only two instances since record-keeping began: six traces in 1951 and two in 1985. The city’s dry spell began on June 28 and lasted 34 days – a good stretch but no comparison to Vancouver’s two longest rain-free summers. The most recent lasted 52 days during Expo 86 – between July 18 and September 7 – and included two trace amounts; the other ran a little longer with 58 rain-free days between June 14 and August 10, 1951 and six traces.

Victoria also broke and tied records for its sunniest and driest months, with 432.8 hours of bright sunshine and zero rainfall respectively. July was the sunniest month ever with records dating back to 1968. And at Victoria International Airport, no rainfall was measured in July – not even a trace. It was only the second time that there had been a rain-free July. The first was in 1958 when there were no days with measureable rain or traces over 33 days from June 30 to August 1. Several other cities in the province set records for their driest July in 2013: Vernon experienced 1.1 mm of rain; Revelstoke 6.2 mm; and Kamloops had a mere wetting at 0.6 mm. Adding to July’s spectacle were unexpectedly comfortable temperatures given the record dry and sunny skies. In Vancouver, temperatures averaged 18.3°C – a mere 0.3°C warmer than normal.

July’s delightful weather was good news for restaurants with patios but left many scrambling to find enough staff to work the overflow traffic. On the flip side, typical foul-weather venues such as museums, malls and movie theatres experienced a dip in attendance. The lack of rain was also a boon for beach lovers and campers, although it did put Vancouver Island and the BC Lower Mainland on a high forest-fire alert. Surprisingly, the water supply in Greater Vancouver was only slightly lower than previous years with reservoir water levels at 85 per cent and no air-quality advisories were issued for the region.

As a side note, Vancouver just squeaked into the record books. Within minutes of rain-free July coming to an end, the skies opened up making it a very close call.