Hello
I thought that our forum could use such a thread. The weather thread is great for day to day observations and forecasts, but I felt we need a thread completely devoted to Climatic and Ecological discussions as well.
I wanted to start it off by posting a few graphs I made today to shed some education on the myth that the West Coast is always rainy and wet.
I focus particularly on Victoria because I feel very few across the nation actually know how dry and sunny it is.
This first chart is the Victoria airport and the Victoria Gonzales weather station. One immediately sees that the South Coast of BC has a strong wet / dry season cycle, hence it is sometimes classified as sub Mediterranean instead of Marine (along with its mild temperatures as well). The Gonzales station is also considerably drier than the airport, which is located a good 20 km out of the city.
Here are the Victoria stations compared to Vancouver. As you can see Vancouver experiences the same cycle, but is somewhat more moist than Victoria year round.
Now here is vancouver compared to the Spences Bridge weather station in the dry interior of BC. This really shows the amazing difference in precipitation levels the Coast Mountains make. Spences Bridge is also one of the driest locations in Canada south of the 60th parallel, and it is only a 2.5 hour drive east of Vancouver.
Here is the Victoria stations compared to Calgary. From late April to late September it is actually drier in Victoria than in Calgary. Of course this flips dramatically in the winter, when Calgary is one of the driest cities in Canada.
This is the Victoria stations compared to Halifax. Here one can see how much drier this area of the south coast is than Halifax.
Here is the Victoria stations compared to Toronto. Here, the Victoria Airport station is drier than Toronto on average from April to September, while the Gonzales station is actually drier than Toronto from March to October (the majority of the year)
Here is Vancouver compared to Halifax, and believe it or not, YVR receives around 250mm less a year or precipitation than Halifax.
And here are all of the stations together. Here it is really interesting to compare and contrast all of the different precipitation patterns across Canada (the sub Mediterranean wet winter / dry summer of southern coastal BC, the dry desert of the BC interior Valleys, the dry winter moist summer of the Alberta grasslands, the dry winter & strong summer convection rain Southern Ontario and the true Maritime climate of Halifax, with only a slight reduction of rain in the summer.
I hope you enjoyed this, and please feel free to dispel your own climate myths that haunt your region and / or showcase ecological and climatic aspects of your province.
Cheers
Metro-One
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