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March – much whiter than normal

Nature's mood swings set this past month apart from the average

 

If you're happy to see the what should be the end of the yo-yo-like weather we're had in and around Castlegar in the past month, you've probably got a lot of company.It seems anywhere you go they like to tell you: 'If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes' it's just normal for the unpredictable to happen. But the late-winter and early-spring stabs of cool air and falling, blowing snow have actually been much more than normal.

The kindly and courteous folks at Environment Canada have supplied an overview of the third month of 2012, and while it was nothing disastrous, it was out of the ordinary.Normally in March the average high is 8.8 degrees. This year the daily maximum average was 6.5 degrees.

It wasn't your imagination!

Some interesting information from the record book indicates the warmest March day on record was back in 1966 on the 29th – 21.7 degrees. The coldest, in 1989 on the third – a chopper-chattering –16.As for the stuff they like to call precip, the average rainfall in March these parts is about 47 millimetres of rain and 14.8 centimetres of snow.

This year the rain was down just slightly – at 43.3 ml of rain. Snow, as you probably noticed, was way up – a hefty 51.4 cm. That's the most snow since 1997.