Fall weather outlook in B.C. Interior truly a best guess scenario right now

PENTICTON – The long-range forecast for a milder than normal fall isn’t panning out, as future weather patterns have stymied Environment Canada’s computer weather models for Kamloops and the Okanagan.

Even the short-range forecast is tough to predict, as recent weather patterns have taken on a decidedly capricious nature.

Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist says the weather office issued its fall forecast at the beginning of September, but since then the computer weather model has gone off the rails.

“We run it officially once a month, right around the beginning of the month, then follow it through the month and monitor how it's changing, and it had been,” Lundquist says.

He says it hasn’t done that in many years.

“It’s waffling between one solution and another. One of the more recent ones I saw, it couldn’t choose one of the three categories. So, basically what that means is there is a one-third chance for conditions to be either above, normal or below normal for the next few months,” he says.

“That’s about as sitting on the fence as you can get. It normally has no trouble picking one category or another, but right now it can’t seem to pick anything for the Interior,” he says.

Lundquist says the computer modelling still indicates a warmer than normal fall for the coast, and he thinks the forecast will be similar for the Interior.

He says the Pacific Ocean is in a neutral state, neither in La Niña or El Niño condition, so there isn’t much information to draw on there, either.

“Even the short-range model is highly changeable. I look at it over the last few days, and every day it is setting up different than the previous run,” he says.

Lundquist says fall can also be a time of constantly changing weather patterns, as hurricanes inject a lot of energy into the atmosphere, changing global weather patterns.

“There are only a few spots in the Pacific Ocean that are below average for sea surface temperature, so to me, there is probably a high likelihood that even the Interior will have the next three months warmer than average,” he says.

“That being said, it looks pretty cold for the next week or two, with a chance of snow on Friday or Saturday, as low as the Pennask Summit,” he says.

“If there is a message out there, perhaps it is if people are planning to travel the passes, it’s time to start thinking about winter tires a little earlier than they normally do,” he says.

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