Spring is always my favourite time of year. Only now do you have the chance to see hail, snow, sun, rain, lightning and wind all in a day, or even a few minutes. And yesterday was one of those days.

Lucky for us, the East Coast got it a little worse than us..

We got some hail, but Nanaimo got so much it looked like snow and turned into a gooey slushy mess.

In the afternoon, we got some brilliant sunshine.

But an hour or two later, this is what it looked like at the Parksville Junction on Hwy19.

There was also an inch or two of slush in Cathedral grove.

The good news is we should see plenty of sun today. It’s going to stay cold in the mornings for a while yet but the suns warmth is increasing and we should get above 10C everyday. Saturday will be a little cloudy, but it shouldn’t rain much if at all. And Sunday through early next week looks pretty great.

Oh, one last thing. Have you ever listened to hail? It’s a neat sound. My wife and converted weather geek Theresa took this video of hail falling yesterday.

Ok, so its not really exciting to watch, but if we didnt have this video, how would we know what hail sounded like? ;-)

Have a great weekend.

Quick update(10:20AM): Wind Peak has grown for West Coast for 2PM…
Change shown below:

4PM shows 65-70knot (110-130+kph) gusts possible for Tsawassen/Georgia Strait. Ferry cancellations likely.

We’ve had a wet night. We have received 30mm of rain since this storm started around 4PM yesterday. Overnight we had bouts of wet snow and I woke up to slush covering my car.

The wind will pick up this morning, it has already prompted the Powell River ferry to be cancelled. The UWash model shows extreme winds for the Ucluelet and Tofino area, the strongest of the winter that I remember.

Here is the peak of the winds forecast at 2PM.

You can see the dark purple aimed right at Ucluelet and the mouth of Barkley Sound. Gusts to 70 knots or 130kph. We will see whether that happens. I will try to update when the new forecast comes out around 9AM.

We can expect gusts in the 60-80kph range in our area. We don’t have a wind warning for our area, but the rest of the Island and South coast does. Batten down the hatches.

Welcome to Spring!