Vancouver, Victoria rain-free as driest-ever records set around B.C.

VANCOUVER – Environment Canada confirms not a drop of rain fell over Vancouver and Victoria during July.

Vancouver recorded 411 hours of sunshine for the month — the first time the city has been precipitation-free since 1937 when tracking began on rainfall statistics.

Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist says the previous sunniest July occurred in 1985 when Vancouver basked in 388 hours of sun and recorded only a trace of rain.

Several other B.C. cities set records for the driest July, with Vernon recording just 1.1 mm of rain to break a mark set in 2003, Revelstoke saw just 6.2 mm, eclipsing a 1922 record, and just .6 mm fell in Kamloops washing out the old record of 1.3 mm, set in 1970.

Vancouver just squeaked into the record books, because rain began falling at the measuring station at Vancouver International Airport early on Aug. 1, barely an hour after the precipitation-free record was claimed.

Lundquist says a new system is bringing unsettled weather to Southern B.C. in time for the B.C. Day long weekend and he warns it will pack thunder and lightning, especially through the Interior, but very little rain, raising the potential for forest fires in the province’s parched woodlands.