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Warm Castlegar October sets records

Four daily temperature records set
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2022 brought the first frost-free October in 10 years. (File photo)

Summer seemed to last into October in the West Kootenay as the month became the fourth in a row with warmer and drier than average conditions.

Forecaster Jesse Ellis reports this was due to a blocking ridge of high pressure that kept the heat here through Oct. 19.

The heat during the first two-thirds of the month set four new daily temperature records and helped break the record mean monthly temperature.

The new record mean monthly temperature at the West Kootenay Regional Airport weather station is 10.6 C, which was 2.6 degrees higher than the climatological average, according to Ellis.

Temperature records were set on three consecutive days — Oct. 2 (22.7), 3 (25.5) , and 4 (24.8) — and on Oct. 12 (21.3).

However, October’s max temperature of 25.5 degrees did not beat the all-time max temperature record of 27.2 set in 1980.

It was also the first frost-free October in over ten years.

Things changed after Oct. 20 as a series of Pacific frontal systems in a zonal (westerly) flow brought a return to near-normal temperatures with rain falling during ten of the last eleven days of the month.

All of the month’s 29.8 mm of rain fell during this eleven day period. The monthly rainfall total was 40 per cent less than the average monthly total of 49.4 mm.

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