BURST
So far this month, it has been a little quiet along Vancouver’s ski and snowboard row.
West 4th Avenue is home to several large ski, skate and snowboard shops. A playland for outdoor enthusiasts, it’s a stretch that’s usually heaving at this time of year.
But a warmer-than-normal winter and no snow for Metro Vancouver has left some wondering whether to pack away their skis and get out their paddle boards and mountain bikes.
Chris Turjanica, the store manager for West Coast Sports, said business was really good before Christmas with many skiers and snowboarders optimistic as those first flakes started to fall in the mountains.
But when the rain hit the North Shore Mountains and the freezing levels rose, the number of local skiers and snowboarders shopping slid downhill.
Fortunately, he said travellers tend to stop in Vancouver to visit the ski and snowboard shops on West 4th while on their way to B.C.’s Interior snow-laden mountains in places like Revelstoke and Kelowna.
“So right now it’s not a lot of local skiers,” he said. “It’s either people visiting town or people that live here and have trips booked and they need some new gear.”
Turjanica said staff might consider putting out their summer stock early depending on what happens with the weather, but so far customers haven’t been asking for it, likely because they’re still hoping for snow.
“Historically it usually snows mid-to-late February and sometimes it snows again in March, especially in Whistler so there’s always that hope that the weather will change. But it’s hard to say what’s going on this year,” he said.
More than a dozen heat records were smashed in B.C. on Thursday, as many residents, particularly those living on the South Coast, continue to swap winter jackets and toques for T-shirts.
Thermometers hit springlike temperatures of 16.4 C in Abbotsford, breaking the 1984 record of 15.1 C, and reached 16.1 C in Agassiz, breaking the record of 14 C. Squamish was a balmy 15.1 C, up from a record 13 C.
On Vancouver Island, the record warm temperatures were slightly cooler than the Lower Mainland but still warm for this time of year. Victoria set a record 13.9 C, breaking 12.6 C set in 1987, and, in Duncan, residents basked in temperatures of 14.1 C, beating a record 13.3 C.
Campbell River’s weather spiked to 14.7 C, smashing a previous record of 12.2 C. Heat records were also set in central B.C., with Prince George hitting 11.7 C, beating a record 10 C and in Bella Bella, where the temperature was a record 14.2 C.
Meteorologists say B.C.’s South Coast has been hit with unusually warm temperatures , atmospheric rivers and a high-pressure ridge leading to record-low snowfall.
Colin Fong, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said a ridge of high pressure has settled over much of B.C.
“So when that happens, it kind of acts as a shield from any oncoming systems coming in off the Pacific and if anything, it’s actually deflecting those systems up and over the ridge and redirecting them toward the North Coast,” said Wong. “So while it has been rather wet and rainy on the North Coast, we’re enjoying this ridge where it’s kind of pumping in some warm air from the south and that’s what we’ve been enjoying for the past few days.”
While the sunshine is a welcome change from the heavy rain that has pelted the South Coast for much of the winter, it hasn’t been great for the lower elevation ski hills.
However, Fong said winter isn’t over yet and there’s still a chance for snow on the North Shore Mountains and Mount Washington on the Island.
Fong predicts the ridge of high pressure will slowly break down this weekend, with a return to cooler or more seasonal temperatures: “So that’s going to take its nice warm weather into the Prairies, and that means B.C. itself is going to be trending toward normal for this time of year.”
That could mean a glimmer of hope for skiers and snowboarders.
“It’s still winter and there is cold air present in the north. Looking into mid-February, there’s potentially some cold Arctic air coming down into B.C., but that’s more so for the central and northern Interior,” said Fong. “So it’s not something that we can really discount. And even going back into 2022 it snowed as late as April, so that chance of snow is still there even in the spring.”
Michael Pidwirny, a climatologist at the University of B.C. Okanagan, said last week that the weather normally fluctuates due to a complex series of cause-and-effect processes, however climate change is pushing temperatures up globally.
He said scientists can assign probabilities of human-caused climate change to weather events but the data on this winter’s warmer-than-normal winter hasn’t been analyzed.