‘A lot of pressure on June to deliver:’ meteorologists say this month is last chance for rain

CHEK
WatchThis spring has been much dryer than normal and that has many worried about drought conditions this summer. But as Luisa Alvarez reports, experts say there is still hope to turn it around.

The recent, hot dry weather has many flocking to the beach as if it were already summer.

Last month, we only saw five days of rain.

“It’s very dry everywhere, everywhere you look,” said Armel Castellan, meteorologist with Environment Canada.

Numbers from Environment Canada show this year in May, Victoria had 28 millimetres of rain. Only slightly below the May average of 37.5 mm.

A huge improvement from last year which saw a record-breaking dry spell with just 3.4 mm of rain falling the entire month.

While the numbers this year begin to paint a better picture, it’s also important to note that over a third of the 28mm of rainfall Victoria saw this year fell in just one day.

And experts warn the amount of rain that fell in May is not as critical as what they hope will come this month.

“There is a lot of pressure on June to deliver because we know come July and August temperatures are high and precipitation patterns are pretty much non-existent so we really need to get something as early as we can in that transition period from spring to summer,” said Castellan.

Without that transition period, the consequences this summer could be grave.

“June is going to deliver at least for the first part of the month and that is good news. It should show some precipitation activity as early as Wednesday, really Thursday and Friday continually, so the temperatures are going to dip below normal actually and that is really what we are hoping to see,” said Castellan.

Luisa AlvarezLuisa Alvarez

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