If it seems like one of the warmest winter breaks you can remember on the North Shore, you’re not wrong, according to Environment Canada.
Temperatures measured at the West Vancouver weather station broke records twice this week.
On Thursday, the mercury reached 13.6 C, beating the previous 12 C record for Dec. 28 set in 1986. Wednesday’s 14 C also is a new record for the North Shore on a Dec. 27, beating the previous high of 11.5 C, also set in 1986.
“We’ve been setting records at some of the stations where we’ve got data going back to 1920ish, as well,” said Brian Proctor, Environment Canada meteorologist. “They’re fairly long standing, if you want to put it that way.”
There are two main meteorological factors driving the balmy start to winter, Proctor said. The first is the El Niño phenomenon, a natural cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean surface that comes every few years.
The other is a ridge of high pressure that’s been stuck in the B.C. Interior, which has had the effect of redirecting warmer coastal winds up from the American Southwest toward the B.C. coast.
“We’ve got this really strong blocking ridge,” Proctor said. “It’s limited any west-to-east motions of frontal systems, which is what we typically would expect this time of year.”
For the local ski hills, it’s been bad for business with closures of some hills and runs completely.
Proctor said the high-pressure ridge is starting to wane now. The forecast for the New Year’s long weekend is mainly cloudy with some showers and temperatures around 10 or 11 C. By next week, things should feel more like the usual seasonal conditions, Proctor said.
“We’re definitely cooling things back very slowly,” he said.
