October was a record-setting month in Williams Lake when it comes to the average temperature and precipitation.
Alyssa Charbonneau is a Meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“For Williams Lake the mean temperature for the month of October was 8.8 degrees. Normal is 4.6, so over 4 degrees warmer for a mean temperature, which is quite a bit. In terms of precipitation, 4.4 millimetres of rain was recorded. Compare that to a normal of 41, which gives you about 11 percent of your normal rainfall.”
Charbonneau says the record average temperature for Williams Lake was 7.7 degrees, well below this year’s 8.8, set back in 1986.
The previous record rainfall in the Lake City for October was 5.5 millimetres in 1987.
The records in Williams Lake date back to 1960.
In Quesnel, they date back to 1893.
Despite that, Charbonneau says it was the third warmest and driest October on record.
“The mean temperature for the month in Quesnel was 8.2 degrees, compared to a normal of 5.5. And for precipitation, the Quesnel Airport saw 4.8 millimetres of rain compared to the normal of 52.6 millimetres, so around 9 percent of average rainfall.”
The records for Quesnel are 10.2 degrees for average temperature in 1902, and just 1.8 millimetres of precipitation, dating back to 1914.