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June brings wet weather, in July sun shines

For the fourth straight year, the amount of precipitation recorded during June was greater than normal.
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With the wet June now behind us

For the fourth straight year, the amount of precipitation recorded during June was greater than normal.

According to Ron Lakeman in weather services at the Southease Fire Centre in Castlegar a main rain event from the night of June 18 to June 20 brought 62.5 millimetres of rain.

On one day, June 19, rainfall measured 46.0 mm.

“This was the greatest amount of rain we ever encountered in one day in the month of June,” Lakeman says.

The previous greatest one-day June rainfall was 44.2 mm from 1986.

During the week following the main rain event, waves of Pacific moisture spiraled northeastward from coastal Oregon-Washington for further showers and relatively cool temperatures. Another 16 millimetres of rain fell during the night of June 24.

The 105.4 millimetres of rain this month was 160 per cent of the normal June rainfall but less than half the record maximum amount of 227.7 millimetres received during June 2012.

“We’re less than half of what we got last year,” says Lakeman. “It’s still far in excess of what the normal is … if you put it in comparison, June of 2013 was downright dry. But in reality it was still was a wet month, just not as wet as the extreme we had last June.”

The weather man describes the weather as uneventful in the first half of the month with “a flat ridge of high pressure producing several sunny, warm days while weak disturbances allowed for unsettled conditions with generally light showers and thundershowers at times.”

Lakeman reports the monthly mean temperature at only slightly warmer than normal — by 0.5 degrees.

“The average high temperature was almost bang on normal and the average overnight low was about a degree milder,” he said.

A high of 32.2 degrees was recorded on June 30 and the low occurred on June 3 at 6.2 degrees. The record high was recorded in 2008 and was 37.9 degrees. The record low was 1.6 degrees.

The final few days of the month were still unsettled at times but with a large upper ridge of high pressure building from the south much warmer temperatures also developed.

Now into July without a major rainy season, Lakeman says we could still expect some unsettled weather bringing moisture along with the heat.

“In June, it is far more common to get a lot of rain,” he says. “Of the summer months, June is the wettest by far.”

July is commonly drier than June with August and September being the driest months of the year.