British Columbia set 10 rainfall records during last rain storm

Jan 5 2019, 7:29 am

It’s safe to say that British Columbia’s latest storm was a big one.

An intense Pacific frontal system brought rainfall warnings across Metro Vancouver, winter storm warnings on interior highways, and at one point, there were 38 weather warnings in effect across British Columbia.

So maybe it’s not that big of a surprise to hear that a number of rainfall records were broken before the storm ended.

ECCC Weather BC recently announced that nearly a dozen records for the most snowfall and most precipitation were broken on Wednesday, January 2 and Thursday, January 3.

On Wednesday, January 2, Whistler received 51.2 cm of snowfall, breaking a record that had dated back to 1935. Ucluelet, which saw a whopping 214.2 mm of rainfall, set the record for their rainiest day in history.

The biggest day, however, came on Thursday, January 3, when 10 new records for greatest precipitation were set.

The following areas broke all-time records for greatest precipitation on January 3:

Location New extreme Previous extreme Year of previous extreme Records began
Abbotsford 66.0 mm 57.6 mm 1984 1944
Blue River 32.8 mm 21.6 mm 1969 1914
Gibsons 46.6 mm 43.8 mm 1984 1924
Pitt Meadows 83.4 mm 74.0 mm 1984 1874
Puntzi Mountain 11.9 mm 3.8 mm 2014 1959
Sechelt 46.6 mm 43.8 mm 1984 1924
Vancouver 54.8 mm 43.8 mm 1994 1896
Victoria 48.2 mm 27.2 mm 1936 1914
White Rock 50.8 mm 15.0 mm 1935 1929
Williams Lake 16.0 mm 11.6 mm 1993 1960

How’s that for some rainy day weather?

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