Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK
August 26, 2024 - 3:30 PM
Heavy rain, thunder and lightning, and gusty winds accompanied the severe storm cells that tracked across the Southern Interior this past weekend, but when it came to rain, Kamloops received a record amount.
Kamloops reached a new rainfall record with a total of 29.4 millimetres of precipitation on Friday, Aug. 23. The previous record was 18.5 mm in 2023 beating last year's rainfall amount by more than 10 mm.
“It was a very blustery, thunderstormy afternoon and evening for sure,” Environment Canada meteorologist Chris Doyle told iNFOnews today, Aug. 26.
The whole Thompson-Okanagan region got heavy rain but he said Kamloops got the most.
An upper low developed off the coast of Oregon before moving through Washington state and up into the Thompson-Okanagan region bringing torrential downpours and dangerous winds before moving east into Alberta.
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Kelowna recorded 13.6 mm of precipitation of Friday, Vernon say 5.7 mm and Penticton only got 1 mm. Osoyoos got 15.8 mm, which was a new daily record.
Due to the high wind, power outages impacted many Kamloops residents. Wind recorded in the area of the Kamloops airport showed the strongest gusts reached about 93 km/h.
“Kamloops took the cake for that storm on Friday afternoon, that’s for sure,” Doyle said.
Jim Moroz, manager for facilities and emergency response for Kamloops airport, confirms two arrivals that were set to land in Kamloops around 5 p.m. on Friday during the storm were not able to touch ground because of the weather. The planes instead had to divert back to their original take off point in Vancouver. No departures flights were scheduled during the storm.
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Kamloops also experienced minor rockslides due to the rain and wind but the effects were not overwhelmingly damaging.
The amount of rain the Thompson-Okanagan got over the weekend is expected to be beneficial in subduing wildfires in the area.
Holdover fires — when a tree is wet and gets struck by lightning but does not ignite right away due to the moisture — are possibilities in storms like the one the Thompson-Okanagan experienced.
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