Single weekend of wild weather made October colder and wetter than normal

A couple of wild weather days in October was all it took to make an average month of weather in Kamloops and the Okanagan cooler and wetter than normal.

Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist says near-record amounts of snow that fell on Oct. 23 and a record cold night on Oct. 25 “really hammered us” when it came to skewing the monthly weather statistics in Kamloops and the Okanagan.

Two record lows were recorded in October, one in Vernon on the night of Oct. 25, when the city dropped to -10.1 Celsius, shattering the old record of -5.6 C set in 1919.

Kamloops also hit a record low of -11.4 C on Oct. 25, beating the old record of -7.8 C, set in 1954.

The Okanagan experienced average temperatures for the month, with all three cities coming within a half degree of their normal average temperatures.

Penticton averaged 8.8 C, right on par with its normal October average.

Kelowna’s October temperatures averaged 8.2 C compared to the normal of 8.4 C, while Vernon’s average of 7.6 C was higher than its normal average of 7.2 C.

Kamloops’ average temperature was the exception, with the city recording an average October temperature of 7.8 C, compared to it’s normal 8.5 C average.

It was also the fifth wettest October on record for Kamloops, with 45 mm of precipitation falling, compared to the normal 19 mm, up by 230 per cent.

Okanagan cities were also wet, with Penticton recording 48 mm compared to its normal 26 mm.

Kelowna received 44 mm compared to that city’s normal 29 mm, while Vernon saw 63 mm of precipitation compared to the normal 35 mm that usually falls.

“If we subtracted that one day of snow and one day of cold, we probably would have been warmer and drier than average. October began and ended on pleasant notes, with about as nice weather as we could expect for Halloween,” Lundquist says.

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