Last week, the fine folks from NorthTech windows and doors came and replaced all the windows and two of the three doors in our house. Bal’shoye spasibo.
Unfortunately, the window casings—the trim that goes around the window on the inside—were not shipped with the windows themselves so we have to wait a few more days (or weeks) until they arrive and are installed.
Because my office is so small, and my desk completely blocked access to the window, I decided to move my office out into the main family room in our basement.
I’ve been kind of enjoying the additional space it offers, and, though the space is currently a mess, I’ve been considering keeping my desk out here. More space. More room to breath. Less feeling like I’m stuck in the back room in the basement.
Thing is? It’s been kinda chilly down here the last few days. I’m currently wearing a sweater and a jacket, and have an electric heater under my desk with a blanket over my shoulders. The heat is on in the house, but it is set fairly low, because it’s only mid-September. I mean, who turns their heat on this early? It’s barely the end of summer. (editor’s note: after writing this, I discovered one of the kids had left the basement door open; turns out, it’s not quite that cold in here…)
Actually, depending on what metric you use, summer might end labour day weekend, the first day the kids go back to school, or on the Autumnal equinox, which falls on September 23 this year.
While it’s still a few days off from equinox, the chances of the last few days of this summer making up for the first 90 days is slim to none.
For nearly two thirds of that time—59 days—the temperature stayed below 20 degrees. And, if you consider 25 “summer weather”, then we only saw 4 days of actual summer weather this summer. The hottest day of the year? August 4, which reached a balmy 27.4 degrees.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the thermometer, there were three days this summer where the temperature didn’t crack the double digits.
And don’t even get me started on rain. Up until Labour day weekend, the longest stretch we’d had without the sky at least spitting at me when I went outside was three days.
It was so wet that there was a literal lake that developed on the Emperor’s Challenge route. The trail down from Windfall Lake is more creek than trail and the puddle outside my front door has been there nearly continuously for the last three months.
In comparison, last year had 51 of 90 days above 20 degrees, of which 20 were above 25 degrees and one even made it to 30 degrees.
Of course, it had already snowed by this time last year, so maybe it hasn’t been that bad. And, for some reason that hasn’t been fully explained to me, the last few weeks have been blissfully mosquito…well, not free, but there seemed to be a lot fewer of them than in years past.
But I didn’t want to seem to just be making stuff up, so I called up Matt MacDonald. He’s a Meteorologist with Environment Canada out of Vancouver, where they enjoyed a warmer, dryer summer than normal.
He says that, on average, June in the Peace see 16 days above 20, July sees 22 days above 20, August sees 20 days above 20, and even September sees eight days above 20.
When the temperatures are averaged out, this year seems a lot closer to normal, but he points out that the way averages are calculated is the highest temperature and the lowest temperature of each day are averaged, then that is used to calculate the monthly average. “If your highest temperature was lower,” he says, “but your lowest temperature was actually higher than normal, it averages out to the same or nearly so.”
The historical average for June was bang on the money, at 13.4 degrees. In July, the monthly average was only .1 cooler than normal, at 15.3 degrees.
In August, the average temperature for the month was a full degree cooler than normal.
The average across those three months was 14.1 degrees, .3 degrees below normal.
He even drew special attention to my birthday, August 8 (remember that for next year; you didn’t get me anything). “The temperature on August 8 was 8.5 degrees,” he says. “It was the coldest August 8 recorded since the weather station in Chetwynd was put there in 1970.
Thanks.
It might surprise some people, says MacDonald, but the Chetwynd Meteorological station (the closest station to Tumbler Ridge) actually saw less rain in July than it usually does.
While June saw 92.6 mm of rain, compared to the normal of 75.7 and August completely blew the average out of the water with 148.8 mm of rain, nearly triple the usual 51.4 mm (and breaking rainfall records on August 5, 7, 17 and 18), July only saw 48.2 mm, well below the average of 76.9 mm. Over the summer, there was 289.6 mm of rain, 142 percent of the average 204 mm
The defining stat of the year, though, might be the number of days that it rained, as every month had more days of rain than normal. June saw 18 as compared to 13, July 16 as opposed to 14 and August a sky-watering 20 days with precipitation, as opposed to the usual 13, and that’s only counting the days where more than .2 mm collected.
He says this year, the ridge of High Pressure that normally parks itself over Alberta was anchored over Alaska, which saw record breaking heat. “That placed the Peace on the backside of the jet stream,” he says. “As a result, you saw cooler, more unstable air from Yukon and lot wetter than normal.
The Peace was the exception to the rule, though, says MacDonald, as both June and July were the hottest months on record globally for 180 years.
Typical, really. We just gotta be different.
