If last month felt a little more parched than usual to you, your instincts were correct.
The latest statistics from Environment Canada show that Metro Vancouver just lived through an abnormally dry July.
According to the weather agency’s statistics, the region usually gets just over 34 mm of rain for the month.
This year, just 17 mm, less than 50 per cent of the average, fell in Metro Vancouver.
Environment Canada meteorologist Matt Loney said the province’s entire southwest had a dry month, which came on the heels of an already parched June.
“Places like Comox were the driest June on record. And they had another warm and dry July on top of that,” he said.
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“These precipitation deficits in many areas are being exacerbated by the dry conditions.”
For now, Metro Vancouver remains at Stage One, its lowest level of water restrictions.
In Abbotsford, up the Fraser Valley, however, conservation measures have been pushed up to Stage Two, meaning a ban on lawn watering and more restrictive rules for watering plants.
Metro Vancouver says that while its reservoirs are holding at about 76 per cent, it is still asking people to be careful about their water use, limiting lawn watering to once a month and doing it early in the morning with automatic sprinklers.
“That reservoir does have to last us for the rest of the high-demand season, and so it has to last us all through August when temperatures are typically high,” Metro Vancouver director of water services Linda Parkinson said.
In the short term, Loney said the region appears to be set to get a little relief in the days to come.
“Next week, we do have this upper trough that looks like it’s going to park itself over the West Coast,” he said.
“There will be an increasing chance of showers coming with that.”
But he said the rest of August is forecast to return to a hotter, drier pattern, meaning more appeals for water conservation are likely in the weeks ahead.
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