With Dec. 25 a week away, it appears a white Christmas is not in the cards for Nanaimo.
Rain is currently forecast until Monday, Dec. 24 and Armel Castellan, Environment Canada meteorologist, said while there is always a possibility that temperatures plummet, the chances for snow on Tuesday, Dec. 25 are not likely. A high of 4 or 5 C and a low of 2 or 3 C is currently forecast for Christmas, with the tapering off of showers, he said.
“We’re still in the second half of a very active storm cycle,” said Castellan. “We’ve had a parade of storms from [Dec. 9]. That’s already nine days worth of storms. We’ve seen in that time frame four or five big storms come through … and we still have another on Thursday, which is going to be a very interesting case where we’re possibly going to see some very strong winds and certainly some rainfall with it.”
Castellan said the weather for the weekend looks fairly active, particularly Sunday, and things will start to taper off on Christmas Day, which will be the beginning of a clear stretch.
Nanaimo is not traditionally known for snow at Christmas time, according to Castellan.
“We’ve only seen, from 1955 to 2017, 10 per cent of those Christmases be white, as in two centimetres on the ground, and even fewer of them obviously with snow flying as well as having the snow on the ground, around 4-6 per cent … I just went back to ‘98 and in that time frame, I found five Christmases in 20 years, so about 25 per cent, have had snow on the ground,” said Castellan.
reporter@nanaimobulletin.com
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