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Weekend temperatures down among coldest on record

Nanaimo hit with snow and sub-freezing temperatures over weekend
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Snow and cold temperatures did their best to create beautiful scenes, such as snow-laden trees reflecting on the surface of a lake in Hemer Park south of Nanaimo, Sunday, but failed to generate any new temperature or precipitation records over the weekend. (CHRIS BUSH/The News Bulletin

The weekend’s snow and sub-freezing temperatures didn’t break any records, but were down there with some of the lowest recorded in recent decades.

Snow fell hard and so did temperatures Saturday and Sunday, but it was Monday at about 7 a.m. when the mercury dipped to its lowest point, marking a -9.4 Celsius reading that had commuters scraping heavy frost from windshields.

Cindy Yu, Environment Canada meteorologist, said it’s surprising how cold Nanaimo can get, but no daily records were broken over the weekend.

The coldest Feb. 19 on record dipped down to -11.8 C in 1986. The coldest Feb. 17 was also in 1986 at -10.6.

“Many of the records on the Island were broken that year,” Yu said. “The other was for [Feb. 18]. The record was -8.3. That was in 1990.”

Yu said Environment Canada had not received snowfall measurements for Nanaimo from over the weekend, but said she was not aware of anything indicating a record breaker for the area.



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Chris Bush

About the Author: Chris Bush

As a photographer/reporter with the Nanaimo News Bulletin since 1998.
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