While Vancouver Island is not expected to receive more snow over the weekend, a meteorologist with Environment Canada says the temperatures are not expected to rise enough to melt the snow on the ground.
Ross MacDonald, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says the snow event that settled over parts of the Island on Friday and overnight should be mostly over.
“We’re actually seeing kind of the conclusion of the snow event that we kind of had developed yesterday,” MacDonald said in an interview with CHEK News.
“We had a few kind of lingering bands of kind of precipitation and little bits of snow overnight and very early this morning. And, looking at the radar right now, we still have one that’s just a little bit west of Sooke. It’s pushing in from the Washington State side, but it’s very, very weak, and it’s going to dissipate fairly shortly in the next hour or two, and then and then that’s it.”
MacDonald says the forecast for most of the Island for the weekend is expected to be sunny skies, with some areas expected to have some cloudy tomorrow afternoon. However, he says the temperatures may not get high enough to melt away the snow on the ground, with temperatures forecast to be cooler over the weekend.
For the snowfall on Friday, MacDonald says no records were broken but Comox received the most with 17 centimetres, north Courtenay receiving 12 cm, Nanaimo with 9 cm, and North Cowichan with 4 cm.
“It was an Island-centric storm. A lot of moisture really never managed to make it to the mainland [on Friday],” MacDonald said. “It was very much contained on kind of Vancouver Island for the most part.”
While there is no more snow expected over the weekend, MacDonald says Environment Canada is keeping an eye on a storm system coming in for Tuesday that may bring more snow with it.
“Our next opportunity for some precipitation coming into the area and then perhaps a little bit of snow may come as we push into Tuesday,” MacDonald said. “It’s a little ways off to fine tune and see where we’re gonna be with it.”
MacDonald says on Wednesday it is forecast that it will transition to rain for the Island.
Laura Brougham
