Was yesterday beautiful or what!? We reached a balmy 18C and stations all over Vancouver Island flirted with the hot spot for BC for the day. No records broken, it was just a very nice, normal spring day.

Today should be pretty good. The clouds should not thicken and threat of rain won’t come until later this afternoon. The showers will turn to rain and make for a pretty damp Thursday.

After that though, we are setting up for another beautiful weekend! So let’s hope for that!

Dry spring

Accuweather updated their long range forecasts yesterday and the end of April and through Mid May is looking nice… But dry.

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I already detailed at the beginning of this month how dry March was around here.

Dr. Jeff Masters also noted the dryness and unusual cold across the United States this morning:

The temperature map is pretty impressive and shows just how cold everything East of the Rockies has been.. And our warmth.

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Why this strange pattern you ask? Dr Masters notes:

The pattern of warmth in the west and cool conditions in the east was due to the fact that the jet stream was stuck in a large loop that allowed cold air to spill out of Canada into the Southeast U.S., and warm air to flow northward over the southwestern states. We can describe the jet stream behavior using the Arctic Oscillation (AO) Index, which is a measure of pressure patterns across the Arctic. During March 2013, the monthly-averaged AO index reached its most negative March value since records began in 1950.

What does that jet stream pattern look like? Back to Accuweather.

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…the March 2013 satellite measured temperatures anomalies for the lower troposphere, which clearly shows the well above normal temperatures over northeast Canada, which was under the upper high block and the sweep of colder than normal air being forced underneath the block from north-central Canada down to the eastern U.S. then over into northern Europe. It does not get much more pronounced than that!

And why is that Arctic Oscillation so strongly negative? Suspect #1: Arctic warmth and sea ice loss… Even now at the peak of the ice season, the ice remains extremely thin and fragile and large amounts of scientific resources are being thrown at this immediate mystery.

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