The sun might actually be visible for the next day or two as the heavy wildfire smoke has cleared a bit after a cool, damp weekend.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

Damp weekend weather cooled off wildfires in the Southern Interior, giving a bit of a break from the heavy smoke choking Kamloops and the Okanagan.

“I was joking with my co-workers this morning that I was so stressed out today,” Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist told iNFOnews.ca today, Aug. 2. “There’s a rare meteorological event. The sky is blue and the sun is yellow. Am I in trouble?”

Satellite images show the hot spots in some of the region’s biggest fires have cooled considerably over the weekend, he said.

That easing of the smoke may be helped further by some showers in the Okanagan later today. That's more likely to be in the mountains and could bring dangerous lightning strikes with it, he said.

Temperatures are expected to rise during the week with highs in the low 30s forecast over the next couple of days.

“On Friday, for the weekend, it just looks gorgeous,” Lundquist said. “It’s going to be highs of 23 C to 2 5C, with showers out and about. Are we excited about 23 C and showers? Everybody wants it.”

Last weekend’s cool weather with a few millimetres of rain was unusually popular with everyone throughout the province, he said.

More of the same is expected next weekend, but with more rain. It’s too early to accurately predict how much. Different forecasting models call for a range of two to 12 mm in the Okanagan and a bit more in Kamloops.

The downside is the coming system will likely bring a lot more wind than the relatively calm system from this past weekend, Lundquist said.

Sun lovers should not despair The cool weather won’t last.

“There is a chance, by day nine and 10, that we’ll get an extremely strong ridge again, almost as strong as we had in June but, because it’s August, it will be much cooler than in June,” Lundquist said. “We might be issuing heat warnings again in nine or 10 days from now.”

The heat dome in June broke high temperature records throughout the province.

READ MORE: One more day of the heat wave pushes Okanagan and Canadian records even higher

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. 

News from © iNFOnews, 2021