Northeastern B.C. can expect a "normal" winter in terms of temperatures and precipitation, an Environment Canada meteorologist told the Dawson Creek Daily News on Sunday.
Shayne Keepley, Environment Canada meterologist, said that his organization's seasonal forecast shows "a normal temperature and precipitation" for the region.
The move comes after a heavy snowfall warning last week. On Friday, Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning of 10 to 20 centimetres for cities within the Peace Region.
"By Saturday morning, there was about 16 centimetres of snow in Fort St. John," said Keepley.
Keepley said he did not know the exact amount of snowfall for Dawson Creek, but nearby Chetwynd received about 10 centimetres of snow.
The Farmers Almanac calls for fair and cold weather until the 19th, rainy weather from Nov. 20 to Nov. 23, and stormy weather followed by clearing skies for the rest of the month.
The first week of December aims to be dry and colder. The next two weeks will vacillate, with weather slowly improving later in the month, just in time for Christmas and Boxing Day.
Based on information from Environment Canada, Dawson Creek has seen an average temperature of around -7 C from Nov. 9 to Nov. 15. This is about the same as the temperatures seen last November from a similar period of time.
However, Dawson Creek has seen more snow this year than last year. According to available Weather Network data, there has been about 10 millimetres of precipitation up until last Saturday. Up until the same point last year, only about five millimetres of precipitation had accumulated.
Weather Network data also shows that Monday will go to around -20 C for both Fort St. John and Dawson Creek, but will go up by Friday – closer to between 0 C and -5 C – for the rest of the month.
Both these cities will be warmer than the historic average temperatures over the last 30 years, if forecasts hold.
Meanwhile, in the Prince George region, a major winter storm knocked out power to thousands of B.C. Hydro customers, forced one local school to close its doors and made driving treacherous on Friday.
The snow, rain and sleet began late Thursday night and continued through most of the day Friday, with the temperature hovering around the freezing mark all the while.
Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for the central interior with upwards of 30 centimetres of the white stuff expect to hit some areas east and south of Prince George by Saturday morning. In the city itself, accumulation was expected to be in the range of 10 to 20 centimetres.
The wet, heavy snow collected on tree branches, weighing them down and putting them in contact with hydro lines, causing a series of power interruptions at times affecting more than 12,100 B.C. Hydro customers in the city and surrounding areas. Crews were busy repairing the lines and had some service restored in the afternoon, but other sections weren't expected to be back on line until late Friday night.
"It's an all hands on deck kind of effort," Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer said, noting staff were called in from their days off, contractor crews were summoned and a Hydro crew from Vanderhoof was called in to help.
The Hart and Chief Lake Road areas, as well as customers east of the city were the hardest hit by the outages, but pockets of power outages occurred in other parts of the city.
New outages were popping up all afternoon and Gammer said if winds began to gust, it could cause more trees to hit lines and lead to more outages.
Blackburn elementary school was closed on Friday morning due to one of the power outages on the eastern edge of the city, with staff spending the morning getting in touch with parents to let them know about the situation.
Power was also briefly out at the Prince George airport. Other power outages were also reported throughout the Highway 97 corridor including in Quesnel and Williams Lake.
— with a file from the Prince George Citizen
