Sunny skies finally in Metro Vancouver’s forecast

Metro Vancouver residents who have been grudgingly enduring mostly cloudy and rainy weather this month may finally see sunlight in the coming week.

The Weather Network has forecasted that starting Friday afternoon, the clouds will slowly clear out and the rains will cease, leaving a warmer, sunnier and drier Vancouver in their wake.

"There is a drying, clearing trend on the way," said Mark Madryga, senior meteorologist with Global TV. "Basically the low pressure that’s been giving us the showers and clouds are moving eastward, and a ridge of high pressure is building in the west, so we’ll be seeing some sun."

Vancouver has received abnormally high levels of rain since the beginning of June — 35 mm in the last 10 days, as compared to a monthly average of 55 mm at this time of the year, according to the airport’s weather station. In the southern interior, Kamloops has also been wetter than normal, receiving 28 mm of rain in the first week of June when it normally gets 35 mm throughout the entire month.

"June can be quite cool and showery at times, so it’s nothing out of the ordinary," said Madryga. "Unfortunately this year, we had an extended period of cool, showery weather starting in the middle of May. Usually by now we would have had a few good, short stretches of hot weather, but there is reason to hope for the next five, six days."

Temperatures are expected to reach a high of 25 C on Saturday. Even though they will cool down slightly again for the next two weeks, no rain is predicted. While we have yet to reach beach-weather — that hot, summer stickiness doesn’t usually hit Vancouver until the second week of July — Madryga says we’re getting there.

"Temperatures will be closer to 20 degrees for the rest of next week and we’ll see a mix of sun and clouds," he said. "But at least it’ll be dry and we’re seeing improvements."