There has been a major power outage in Port Alberni. Looks like the entire City and surrounding Valley plus Ucluelet, Tofino and Bamfield are dark. Must have been a big event that caused it, but it wasn’t any weather that I heard about.

I’m in Nanaimo right now at work. There won’t be any current updates to the website until the power comes back on, but the weather station itself has battery backup good for a day so no data should be lost.

BC Hydro is reporting an “On Time” of 22:00 Sept 9.

Check out that radar image, that’s a doozy of a rain front.

EC says we’ll be getting at least 15mm of rain tonight, there was nearly a rainfall warning issued for the West Coast (Uke/Tofino), they’re expecting up to 50mm overnight.

So to put it all into perspective, since September 1, we’ve received 16.5mm of rain… and we’re due for another 15 which would bring it up over 30mm which is respectable for September (normal for the month is 72mm). But when you consider that over the past 4 months, since May 15, we’ve only received 46.5mm, then you get an idea how dry these past 4 months has been. The normals for half of May, plus June, July and August combined is 180mm.

So we’ve received roughly 25% of the precipitation considered “normal” through the summer months.

All that aside, looks like it’s going to be a nice weekend for Fall Fair!

It must be Labour Day weekend! We’re getting rain. :D We’ve had rain for the past 3 Labour Day weekends. I feel bad for the fisher-folks trying to have a nice morning on the water, but hey, they say the fish like the rain.

In the weather department, we should get a little wind on Friday and Saturday in preparation for the rain to come. There is a risk of a thundershower tonight. Pretty doubtful.

There is some pretty interesting weather elsewhere in the world. Hurricane Jimena that just hit Baja California was nearly a Category 5 (1mph off) and had winds over 250kph but luckily weakened before it hit Baja. They still got 150kph winds at landfall, but it looks as though damage was limited.

The other interesting weather? Heat. You think it was hot, even for July, here when it hit 40C? Well what about if we got 25-30C weather in February?

That’s the sort of thing that happened in the Southern Hemisphere in August and here.

Last week saw a freakish heat wave over the near south of South America, especially in Argentina. Buenos Aires (Ezeiza) had 34.0 and 33.5 degrees C, respectively, on Saturday and Sunday; normal would be 1617 degrees. Cordoba had a high of 37.3 degrees on Saturday. Santa Fe reached 38.6 degrees on Sunday.

Via email from Brasil, Loepa tells me that Buenos Aires had its highest ever temperature for August. He states that the Observatorio Buenos Aires registered a high of 34.4 degrees C (94 F) on Sunday, August 30. The old high mark for August had been 33.7 degrees C. This is with more than 100 years of record.