Mt. Nusatsum

Mt. Nusatsum

Friday, January 1, 2010

60th Anniversary of the Month from Hell

The end of 2009 saw a Blue Moon, (although we had just enough cloud cover to make seeing it not easy),  a bit of east wind, and a little skiff of snow. The first day of 2010 in Bella Coola with partial blue sky, - 3 or -4 C and no wind made a great New Years day.

Today was tropical compared to this day in Bella Coola in 1950 when the minimum temperature was -21.1 C. 

It's been 60 years since the month of weather hell that hit the Pacific Coast as a series of Arctic outbreaks and Pacific storms that alternately brought heavy snows to some places on the coast and the province and extreme cold weather the entire month.   I wasn't around for 1950, but did a little bit of looking at weather records for Bella Coola which has a very long term weather record going back over 100 years due to very meticulous weather record volunteers who kept the weather at the Grant Road station for Environment Canada (the existing Bella Coola Airport station only has records from the early 80's).

From all accounts, not only does January 1950 contain the coldest recorded temperature in 100 years of weather records for the Bella Coola Valley, but it is also notable for the fact that the highest daily maximum temperature never came above 0 C for the whole month and there were some impressive lows for a little coastal valley on the Central Coast.  I'll let you know what the record low was on the day it occurred (hint watch the January 15 post).  Grizzly

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