This summer is just about bang-on average weather-wise by Revelstoke standards. Yep, even though it may seem like its been raining constantly, temperature and precipitation so far this summer are pretty much right around the normal, according to Environment Canada.
"It's a little cooler than normal but precipitation wise it's close to normal," said Kelowna-based meteorologist Doug Lundqvist.
For the weather office, summer includes June through August. In June, the normal amount of precipitation is 73.3 mm.; this year 73 mm of rain fell from the sky. This month, as of July 12, 21.5 mm of rain had fallen; the monthly average is 65 mm.
Temperature wise, June was 0.5 C colder than the normal of 16.1 C. July has also been cooler than normal so far (17.5 C vs. 18.2 C) but the latter part of the month is normally warmer, so that's likely to balance out, said Lundquist.
So, why does it feel so rainy? Well, it could be because it has rained most days. The NAV Canada weather station at the Revelstoke Airport where the data is collected has recorded rain on 35 of the past 42 days.
"Even though you had the right amount of rain, you had a lesser amount of rain on more days and probably a lot more cloud around," said Lundquist.
One caveat is the normals were calculated during the period of 1971-2000, so with temperatures rising, as scientists widely agree is happening, then a normal summer would feel colder than what we've experienced the past few years.
"It's probably us getting spoiled over the past 5-10 years," said Lundquist.
For the record, the average temperature in April was a chilly 5.3 C, two degrees below normal and May was 0.6 C colder than normal.
"The spring was definitely cool and likely one of the major factors was La Nina," said Lundquist. "So far this summer has been close to normal for precipitation and a bit cooler than normal but nothing earth shattering."
Note: This article was written before Wednesday night's thunder storm.
Note 2: This article has been edited slightly. Imprecise wording in the seventh paragraph appeared to cast some skepticism on global warming. In fact, we acknowledge the widely held scientific acceptance that global warming is taking place so the sentence has been edited accordingly.