Don’t ditch the sunscreen and A/C just yet.
While Monday is expected to dawn cool and cloudy with rain and thundershowers for parts of B.C., temperatures are expected to climb back up again, culminating in another round of sizzling temperatures by the weekend.
“It’ll be another bout of very hot weather coming up for the latter part of the week,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Greg Pearce, predicting temperatures in the high 20s for Metro Vancouver and high 30s in the Interior.
Pearce said it is too early to say whether next weekend will be hotter than this weekend, when a heat wave shattered a few dozen records in B.C. communities.
On Sunday, 30 communities broke daily temperature records in B.C. The hottest spot was Revelstoke, where the temperature was a half-degree short of 40 Celsius, breaking the record of 35 set in 1925.
Records for June 28 were also broken in the Columbia, Kootenay and Okanagan regions, including Vernon (39.3), Kelowna (38.7) and Kamloops, which hit a sweltering 39.1, surpassing its previous daily record of 38.3 set in 1896.
Whistler set a new high with 35.6 compared to the previous 33.2 C in 1950.
Metro Vancouver was shielded from much of this heat, thanks to an onshore flow from the ocean and cloud cover from early Sunday thunderstorms in Washington state that drifted north. Some parts of the region, such as Grouse Mountain and downtown Vancouver, also got a “few spits” of rain, said Pearce.
This weekend’s record-breaking temperatures were due to a strong “four corners high,” a dome of warm dry air from the Southwest U.S. deserts that usually pushes up to B.C. in late July or early August.
The hot weather prompted Environment Canada to issue an air quality advisory for White Rock, Pitt Meadows, and parts of the Fraser Valley including Abbotsford, Hope, Chilliwack and Agassiz. It recommended that infants, the elderly and people with underlying medical conditions such as asthma or heart or lung disease avoid strenuous activity and stay indoors.
The heat, however, is welcome news for those who are in the business of cooling people down.
Johnny Wikkerink of Johnny’s Pops makes artisan popsicles and sells them from a bike cart at outdoor markets and festivals.
“I can’t work ahead. The stuff keeps on selling out.” Wikkerink said at the end of a busy day at the Vancouver Food Cart Fest. He sold out of his frozen concoctions, all 550 of them, within three hours. He went back to his commissary to reload and sold about 220 more pops.
“When it’s not as hot, people come because they know I make good popsicles, it’s word of mouth,’ said Wikkerink. “But when it’s hot, they go crazy.”
