Temperatures heading below zero in Okanagan, Kamloops next week

It might finally start to feel like winter in Kamloops and the Okanagan next week as temperatures are expected to drop below the freezing mark.

Last year was the warmest year on record for Kelowna and Vernon with the rest of the region not far behind.

Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee said temperatures ought to drop closer to seasonal normals by next week. 

The Okanagan is expecting daily high temperatures to drop from 4 Celsius today, Jan. 16, to -2 C by Thursday next week. Overnight low temperatures are going to follow suit from -2 C to -6 C.

Kamloops is expected to get a touch colder with highs of -3 C on Thursday.

“At this time of year we usually would see a high of -2 C and a low of -8 C for the Kamloops and Okanagan area,” Lee told iNFOnews.ca.

Environment Canada is anticipating a reprieve from the cloudy days with sunny weather in the forecast for Sunday and Monday in the Okanagan and Kamloops, but Lee said that likely won’t last. 

“There should be a little bit more of a delay until we actually see snow fall back into the valleys and in the meantime over the next few days, it’s just valley clouds or fog patches still,” he said. 

A polar vortex system was expected to bring colder temperatures and more snowfall to Western Canada this winter, but Lee said it hasn’t reached the Southern Interior of BC.

“The south is just on the edge of it and that’s why we’re not seeing it be super cold next week,” Lee said.

He said warm air from the Pacific Ocean has given the Southern Interior a warm winter, and even as the temperatures drop they won’t be as cold as the serious cold snaps over the past few years that have damaged crops.

“We’ve gotten a lot of southerly storm tracks so that brought a lot of warm air from the Pacific into the Southern Interior and that’s why we didn’t see our usual cold winter,” Lee said.

“The cold coming into the Okanagan and Kamloops, it doesn’t seem like a repeat of what we had in January 2024. We had a deep freeze then that did destroy some of the crops like the grapes, but this particular one doesn’t seem like it’s too significant.”