Record high winter temperatures hit BC

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you’re sweating in your winter coat today it’s probably because record-high temperatures are hitting BC.

Cindy Yu with Environment Canada says records were broken in Vancouver – which nearly hit a balmy 12 degrees C – Agassiz, Comox, Nanaimo, Kamloops, and Williams Lake.

“All this precipitation is taking warmer temperatures inland from the Pacific, so it’s a milder air mass drifting into the Lower Mainland today,” she explains. “We’re getting a lot of the Westerlies with a lot of the Pacific low-pressure systems.”

Yu says the heat is coming from the ocean, not the sun, because this time of year the sun angle is low.

“It’s actually very typical Vancouver winter weather,” she says. “We tend to get a lot of the systems from across the Pacific… it’s just system after system after system.”

The warmest temperature in the province – and the hot spot in all of Canada – was reported at Entrance Island, south of Nanaimo, at 13.4 degrees, beating the previous record of 12.2 set in 1998.

Vancouver hit 11.6 degrees, up from the previous record of 11.3 degrees set in 1980.

Kamloops reached 9.5 degrees, just up from 9.3 in 1980, while the temperature in Williams Lake hit 6.3, compared to the old mark of 4.5 set for this day in 1986.

In Agassiz it was 12.2 degrees, surpassing the previous 1988 record of 11 degrees. Comox also broke its 2005 record of 10.1 degrees, with the mercury there climbing to 11.7 degrees.

News1130 meteorologist Russ Lacate says Vancouver temperatures will drop back down tomorrow, with a high of 7.

-With files from The Canadian Press

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