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Weather whining a regular pastime

Remember conditions can change from one extreme to the other quickly
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It won’t be long before sunny days will be the norm for long stretches of time after we get out of this April unsettled weather. (File photo by Don Bodger)

When it comes to the weather, we have to be careful what we wish for during these days of climate change.

Sure, it’s been a mediocre start to the spring around the Chemainus Valley and we’ve only seen a couple of days of consecutive sunshine throughout April.

But remember what happened last year. Just in case your memory needs to be refreshed, it was one extreme after another.

The weather in April last year started out with a mixed bag as well and then all of a sudden a heat wave hit just past the midway mark of the month. The temperature soared above 20 Celsius, very unusual for this time of the year, and we actually had a few days before the end of April that topped 20 degrees.

Little did we know that was only setting the table for what was to come and a heat dome sent temperatures soaring toward the end of June.

The weather forecasters on the Island TV stations had been joking about June-uary earlier in the month because conditions were so unsettled. Mother Nature obviously got a bit miffed and delivered us a dose of entirely opposite conditions afterwards with the extreme heat.

There was very little precipitation throughout the rest of the summer and then, as we all know, the mother of all atmospheric rivers struck our region in mid-November, causing extreme flooding.

So the bottom line is some intermittent weather well into 2022 might not be a bad thing based on what we experienced last year. But people tend to make a habit of complaining about the weather anyway – first it’s too cold and then it’s too hot.

We’re lucky to live where we do because people in other places around the globe are either still digging out from April snowfalls or dealing with temperatures far above anything we can comprehend.

Remember it can always be much worse one way or the other. We need to take the current conditions with a grain of salt because it will surely swing the other way before too long and we’ll be pining for some of those cooler conditions again as a relief.



Don Bodger

About the Author: Don Bodger

I've been a part of the newspaper industry since 1980 when I began on a part-time basis covering sports for the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle.
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