As the north braces for another wildfire season, Prince George has now just experienced the driest spring it’s seen since the early 1940s.
The Northern Capital saw just 51.3% of the normal amount of precipitation for the months of March, April and May this year.
“Way below. That is an astounding statistic,” said Environment Canada Meteorologist Armel Castellan.
According to him, we weren’t the only ones to come up alarmingly short.
“It’s also true for Kelowna, which was just a hair above 50% and Comox was only 34% of normal. Watson Lake, technically the Yukon but representative of the north, was also the driest on record at 12.9% of normal precipitation levels.”
Castellan also mentioned that those more vulnerable to poor air quality measures should be watching the index.
“Yesterday we had over 4000 lightning strikes, particularly in the southern interior. If it’s not Northern Alberta fires, pretty soon it could be other fires much closer to our communities causing smoke. It’s something to think about coming into this season.”
For the more immediate forecast, Prince George has been seeing a heat wave over the last week at about around nine degrees above normal. Coming into the next week, Castellan said we should start to normalize and may be dropping down to around 20 degrees with the possibility of rain.