Light showers – Then Dry – Still no Snowpack now or later.

There could be some light showers falling anytime from 7AM to 11AM this morning and then again from around 1PM to sundown.

scattered and light showers this morning.
scattered and light showers this morning.

I would be surprised if we got more than 2mm of rain.

After that, the forecast is bone dry through the weekend and well into next week.

We should get back to sunny skies on Saturday, Sunday and Monday and likely into Tuesday and even Wednesday.

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 7.26.36 AM

 

Snowpack still Zero – Unlikely to Change Soon.

The snowpack on the South Island remains at zero. As you can see from the graph below, by this time last year – which also featured a very late start to the snow – we had one good dump of snow that allowed the snowpack to jump from zero to around 500mm of snow water equivalent or 50% of our average.

We have still not had any such snow events this year in the mountains or elsewhere, and so we remain at zero, which is worse than the “minimum” year recorded on the graph in red.

spd3b23p-2

The long range forecast out to March 6th shows the an average forecast from multiple models of only around 71mm of total precipitation to that date.

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 7.33.40 AMAverage temperatures in that period are hovering, at sea level in Port Alberni, around 5ºC.  Not really cool enough for snow to fall at even those higher elevations.

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 7.33.57 AM

I do notice though that in those ultra long time periods, the outlying models seem to be straying to the cold and wet side, so perhaps that is a hopeful sign.  But at this point, that is all it can be taken as.

 

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