Canada geese enjoy the wet weather at Riverside Park last week.
(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)
June 03, 2013 - 2:00 PM
KAMLOOPS — May was very wet. If you were counting, all but one of the past 15 days have had at least a trace of rain — a soggy end to a month that started with record-breaking high temperatures.
May kicked off with a record-breaking week of well above normal temperatures, soaring to more than 29 degrees Celsius for six consecutive days and breaking three daily records. A week later the rain began to fall and by May 19 our two-week saga of rain began.
With more than 20 per cent of the average annual rainfall amount (217.9 mm) falling, the month was one of the soggiest in recent history but only one rainfall record was actually broken and overall it was not anywhere near the wettest May on record.
On May 21 14.8 mm of rain fell at the airport, breaking the previous record of 10.1 mm and the following day saw 13.4 mm of rain. The heavy rains and thunderstorms mid-month brought high streamflow advisories and concerns over possible flooding in other parts of the Thompson-Okanagan while some highways faced snowfall warnings. Kamloops was spared with the closure of only one small portion of the the Rivers Trail and the Valleyview boat launch. In addition sport fields in Kamloops were closed for several days due to the rain.
At just over 47 mm of rainfall for the month of May, 11 days of more than 0.4 mm of rain and another six days with a trace of rain, it was the fourth wettest of the past 10 years, with 2004, 2010 and 2011 all beating 2013 with between 52.1 mm and 54.6 mm of precipitation. The driest year was 2007 with only 1.6 mm of rainfall for the entire month. The average rainfall amount for Kamloops in May is 24.4 mm.
June has also started off soggy, with 7.8 mm of rain falling in the first two days. It is expected to dry up and warm up this week with temperatures forecast to hit as high as 30 C by the weekend and a possibility of rain forecast for Wednesday.
Statistically 35.2 mm of rain falls in Kamloops in June and temperatures normally vary between 11-25 degrees. On June 29, 1986, 36.8 mm of rain fell in one day, shattering the monthly average and the extreme daily rainfall record.
To contact a reporter for this story, email jstahn@infotelnews.ca, call (250) 819-3723 or message through Twitter @jennstahn.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013