When it rains it pours, not that you’d know that if you call Victoria home this summer.
Environment Canada reports no rain fell in July at the Gonzales station (off Gonzales Bay on the Victoria-Oak Bay border).
“The Gonzales station, which has a period of record dating back to 1899, had 0 millimetres registered,” said Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment Canada. “It was a bit of a surprise to me that there were actually five other years where zero millimetres fell in July.”
An average July will see 14 mm of rain. The last July without rain came in 1984, with other dry spells coming in 1958, 1926, 1922 and 1914.
“It’s as low as it can get. You might get one of these Julys every several decades.”
It was the 11th driest July on record at the Victoria Airport, where 2.2 mm fell (barely enough for a mouse to wet its whistle).
“It was just a couple brief days of rain, think it was the 7th and 9th,” said Castellan. “A little blip in the beginning of July and then the taps ran dry.”
The average temperature at the Gonzales stations was 17.1 C, 1.5 degrees above the monthly normal, while the airport’s average temperature of 18.1 C was 1.4 degrees warmer than normal (marking the fifth warmest July on record).
Castellan says July is historically the warmest and driest month for Victoria, but he expects plenty of sunshine for August.
He expects to see normal temperatures (22 C) for the next several days before temperatures begin to climb again.
“Beyond that it looks like a fairly dominant ridge begins to build,” said Castellan, who expects very little in the way of precipitation.
“I would say August, by and large, looks fairly dry.”
The dry weather resulted in the province issuing a level three drought warning for much of the west coast this week, including all of Vancouver Island.
Last month, the BC Wildfire Service implemented campfire bans in the Kamloops Fire Centre and the Southeast Fire Centre.