WATCH: Roads have been slick all day in Victoria where the rain has been coming down since early Monday morning. The rain has been a trend in recent weeks. Isabelle Raghem has more.
Grey skies and rain have been a trend in recent weeks and they haven’t been ideal for gardeners who have noticed a lot more unopened bulbs more than normal this time of year.
At the “Tulip House,” on the corner of Beach and Dalhousie in Oak Bay, Bob Fleming and his wife plant thousands of bulbs every year.
“Last year, we have 7,500 but this year, we decided to top it off with 10,000 even,” Fleming said.
The masterpiece gets a lot of attention.
“I saw that they’re coming in full bloom so the colour explosion really excites me,” Fleming said.
“The more we plant, the more people we get.”
However, Fleming said while the tulips usually bloom by April 15, this season they are late.
The flowers are also delayed at Butchart Gardens.
“The last two weeks haven’t been the best for us; a little bit of rain, a little bit of colder weather,” Carlos Moniz, the horticultural manager at Butchart Gardens said.
While the season has been slow, Moniz said this is actually what April weather is supposed to be like.
“This is kind of what we used to see way back. The last couple years have been way more advanced, a little warmer, things have come on way quicker,” Moniz said.
Last year in April, temperatures were slightly above seasonal.
And the year before, on April 20, 2016, Victoria reached a high 24.6 C.
While Vancouver Island has been getting a lot of rain this month, it could always be worse. Tens of thousands of people across southern Ontario were without power Monday after an ice storm over the weekend. Freezing rain, ice pellets and high winds of up to a 100 kilometres an hour brought down branches and power lines.
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