Hey! Great news from the world of local weather information!

The folks at UVic who run the “Schoolnet” islandweather.ca websites (and sub-sites, nanaimoweather.ca and victoriaweather.ca) have just brought four new stations online! There are now weather stations feeding into the network (along with this one of course) from Alberni Elementary School, Maquinna Elementary School, Wikkaninnish Community School in Tofino, and Ucluelet High School in Ucluelet. There was also a station recently added at Bamfield Marine Station.

So what does that all mean? Well for Port Alberni it means that when you go to the maps at islandweather.ca or nanaimoweather.ca you’re going to see a little more refined detail in our little area of Vancouver Island. This is a great thing. Anyone who has lived in Port Alberni for more than a few years will already know that there are lots of little micro climates, and between these 2 stations and myself, we should provide an interesting look.

My predication is that you’ll see Alberni Elementary to be the hottest, and wettest in town… I will have the strongest gusts of wind and Maquinna will be nearly windless and likely the coolest.

As for the west coast stations, this addition will really make a huge difference for current, easy, information out on the West Coast.

In all, it’s great stuff. I’ve encouraged them to talk to the Sproat Lake, Cherry Creek and Beaver Creek FDs to try to get weather stations on those facilities as well.. then we’d have really excellent coverage of the Valley!

I’ll mark this post “Hot”, but really it’s not going to be that hot. :) Not nearly summer contest winning hot. Sorry Daniel, Tamara and Chris G. but it doesnt look like we’re going to have 30 degree heat just yet.

That said, everyday this week is slated to be over 20C! That’s definitely a start. I’m not going to tell you what the week after that is looking like. Darn models, you can never trust them that far out anyway!

Hope the Fathers out there have a happy Fathers Day! I will be on the Fathers Day train today. My son has been wanting to go on the train so bad lately I think he might explode!

Finally. Even though we had a relatively normal, even cool, May.. around the globe, May 2010 set tied for the warmest May on record. Which was the third consecutive month that the world set new monthly records for warmth. This was due to the lingering effects of El Nino combining with abnormally warm weather in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our little part of the world really was one of only a few that wasn’t on the warm end of things.

El Nino has collapsed, so be prepared for a La Nina this winter! But lets not get too far ahead of ourselves. First… lets get some serious summer going! :)

Today and tomorrow will be pretty damp, but don’t worry. It looks like we might finally get our first shot at real early-summer weather this weekend! There is an outside chance that someone could win the Contest this weekend. Laura and Libbie look to be on deck for Sundayl.

But the really good news is this lots for more than just this weekend. It’s looking pretty dry and fair for the next week or more. There’s only a tiny bit of rain on the model around the 21st. Other than that, it might not be hot and sunny, but at least it won’t be raining!

There is hope for this summer yet.

In other news, the El Nino that gave us 9metres of snow at Mt. Washington and bare slopes at Cypress has collapsed and it looks like we’re headed into a sharp La Nina pattern in the Pacific for next winter. That means it will likely be cold and what precip we do get could very well fall as snow. My wife will be happy. ;)

This is a repost of an article I posted on May 5. Since there was a frontpage story in the AV Times today (June 3) on efforts to find the source, I thought I would repost this post and ask again that you keep sending in your reports so as to give Guy Cicon at the City and Larry Cross at Catalyst the best possible idea about where the smell is on any given day.

If you text or email me the information as you smell it (number below) I will immediately forward it to Guy Cicon so that if it’s strong enough they might just run out and use their little vaccuums to gather up the stench.

Send your report to any of the following:

Report it at alberni.ca where this thought originated.
Jot it down in an email to me (chrisale@gmail.com).
Leave a comment in this post,
or text me (250-918-0027).
Here is the criteria you need to provide… please try to be as specific as you can.

Date/Time:
Location:
Strength of Smell: (scale of 5… 5 being physically affecting you, watering eyes, nausea, etc)
Nature of Smell: (rotten eggs?sewage?wood?tides?)
Weather: (any wind? rain? I will try to correlate it with information here)
Tide: If possible check if the tide is in or out, again, I can double check this.

If you send me that information, then I will post it on this map:

View Port Alberni Smell Tracker in a larger map

I look forward to your reports. Together, hopefully we can make a difference.

(Please text only to the phone number, I likely will not respond to voice calls.)