June is typically the wettest month in the Cariboo and it lived up to that billing last month.
However, Armel Castellan, a Meteorologist with Environment Canada, says it was only slightly wetter than normal.
“It wasn’t very much wetter for Quesnel per say, it was only 111 percent of normal, so 73.8 millimeters to be precise out of what is the average of 66.4 millimeters, and those fortunately go way back to 1893 that period of record so it’s pretty robust. Just down the road there in Williams Lake, 102 percent of normal, so they were much closer to bang on average.”
Castellan says Williams Lake got 59.9 millimeters of rain last month, just below the normal of 58.6.
He says that is a far cry from what the Lake City has experienced in June in recent years.
“In 2017 only 9 millimeters fell in the month of June and that was the driest on record, and only two years ago, in 2022, 137 millimeters fell, so quite a range.”
Castellon says the records in Quesnel for June are 5.8 millimeters of precipitation in 1982 for a low and 148.8 millimeters in 1955 for a high.
Both communities were also pretty much average when it comes to temperatures.
“It was .9 degrees cooler in Williams Lake where they typically are at 13.3 degrees and we saw 12.4 as the average mean, and then Quesnel normally hit 14.7. They saw the average at 14.0, so .7 degrees off.”
Castellon says both of those temperatures would be categorized as normal.
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