What a difference a month makes.
Heading into September, Vancouver Island was mired in Level 5 drought conditions, which is as severe as it gets.
Fast-forward to today, most of the island has improved to Level 1, which means adverse effects are rare.
On the North Island, it’s at zero, meaning there are no impacts at all.
You can thank a wet and stormy start of fall for that.
Environment Canada meteorologist, Lisa Erven, says it got especially wet in Campbell River: “A big number, here, 159.1 millimetres of rain, and that’s in comparison to a monthly average of about 55 millimetres, so almost triple the amount of precipitation (for September).”
Erven says we’re now seeing a pattern where wet weather systems are rolling in every 24 to 48 hours.
That, she added, was a drastic shift from the summer months when many communities saw only 30 to 50 percent of their average precipitation.
