The obvious lack of rain is prompting the immediate problems with wildfires around B.C.
But a longer-term issue is the lack of snow.
There are some startling numbers in the last regular snowpack bulletin from mid-June that show how bad last winter was when it comes to lack of snow. It was obviously a disaster for the ski industry in southwestern B.C.
But the continuing measurements highlight concerns about potential problems that go well beyond winter recreation.
Nine of the 22 snow basins routinely measured by the river forecast centre had zero per cent of the normal accumulation as of last month, meaning there is no snow at all at the measurement stations. Snow might still be present at higher, unsampled, locations, but the specific spots that are measured year in and year out came up empty last month. They include sites in the lower Fraser basin, the Okanagan, Similkameen, South Coast, Vancouver Island, Central Coast, Peace, Skeena-Nass and the Stikine.
The other basins had measurements that are well below normal. The highest value recorded for snowpack last month was in the North Thompson, at 20 per cent of normal.
The overall provincial average of snow observations is five per cent of normal. There are wide ranges in that measurement across B.C., but the provincial average snowpack is the lowest in 31 years, according to hydrological records.
The most recent bulletin said the rapid melt in May has left little snow across the province and the indices are considered extremely low. Most of the observation sites are in sub-alpine or forested regions at mid-elevation.
The remaining snowpack in B.C. is limited now to the alpine terrain in the mountainous regions.
Most of B.C. had near-normal snowfall last winter, but southwestern B.C. got only 40 per cent of normal, according to earlier bulletins from last winter and this spring.
So the story this year is that a fast, early melt depleted the normal snow reserve in many parts of the region, and the southwest part of the province had scant snow to begin with.
It's having an obvious effect on stream flows. The river forecast centre says in lower-elevation areas, and areas with limited snowpack, "river levels have dropped to extremely low levels for mid-June.
"Flows are at or near minimum levels for this time of year in most rivers on Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii and South Coast. Current flows in these regions are below levels normally observed in late summer."
Various other regions were also seeing stream flow in early summer that is more typically observed in August.
The daily fire update on Tuesday spelled out another obvious impact of the overall dryness this year - another 14 new fires overnight brought the total number burning to 201. The cumulative total since April 1 is 1,086 fires that have covered 280,000 hectares.
The bill up to Tuesday is $116 million and it is climbing at several million dollars a day.
It's difficult to project what the full season will look like, because the picture is so weather-dependent. But last year's fire bill of $370 million was the worst since the firestorm year of 2003, and this year's statistics are tracking much higher than 2014. There were 1,484 fires reported then, and B.C. already has more than 1,000 reported this season, with several weeks to go.
The fire centre said Tuesday that last year at this point the fires had covered 46,000 hectares. This year's burn to date amounts to seven times that area.
The long-running beetle-kill disaster is still in play. Seventy-seven per cent of the burned area this year so far is in the Prince George region, one of the hardest-hit by the mountain pine beetle.
A break in the weather would be welcome at this point.
The long-range forecast is for another hot weekend provincewide, then cooler, wet weather emerging as a trend. But the fire centre notes "confidence in the model is still quite low."
