The month of February will go down in history in terms of how cold it was in the Cariboo.
Bobby Sehkon, a Meteorologist with Environment Canada, says it was the coldest February on record in Williams Lake and the second coldest in more than 130 years in Quesnel…
“For Williams Lake, it was the coldest on record with a mean temperature with -15.7 degrees celsius and that’s a whopping 11.6 degrees cooler than their normal of -4.1 degree celsius, so quite a big difference there. The temperature for Quesnel was 12.2 degrees celsius below their normal, and their mean temperature this month was -15.8 degrees.”
Sehkon says Williams Lake broke the record of -12.8 from 1975, while Quesnel’s coldest ever February on record remains -19.5, which was the average temperature from 1936.
March hasn’t started off on the warm foot either.
Sehkon says Quesnel came close to a daily record on Sunday…
“We did get close for the third of March yesterday. We had the second coldest third of March on record with a temperature of-30.9 degrees. The previous record was from 1939 and it was -31.7 degrees celsius, and that was in Quesnel.”
Sehkon says it was -26.7 in Quesnel this (March 4) morning, which was well off the record of -38.9 from 1955.
Williams Lake his -21.8 this morning and the record for March 4th is -26.7 from 1952.
There is a break in the cold weather on the horizon however.
Sehkon says temperatures will creep towards the normal for this time of year by the end of this weekend.
He says the forecasted high is plus 4 on Sunday, and the average high for this time of year is plus five.