Thought you were wearing more sweaters this September? You probably were.
That's because it was unusually cold which produced some record-breaking temperatures.
"It wasn't -30 C or anything like that compared to what we'll see in the winter, but certainly a cold push just before the midway mark there (of Sept)," Environment Canada Meteorologist Armel Castellan explains. "Prince George was more on the southern end. Fort St. John and Fort Nelson were much harder hit and they also got a lot of snow at that point."
There were two dates that saw records broken, Sept. 13 saw a temperature of - 7.6 C. The previous record was was - 7.2 C back in 1927. Sept. 14 shattered its previous record with a temperature of - 8.0 C. It had been -4.4 C, set in 1943.
Castellan says there are different levels of measuring temperature including the maximum temperature of the day and the minimum temperature of the day. There is also the mean temperature which is the average of the maximum temperature as well as the minimum temperature.
The coldest mean temperature was also on Sept. 13 even though the coldest temperature was actually on Sept. 14. The average mean was 0.3 C because the high temperature that day was lower, which brought the average lower on Sept. 13 compared to the next day.
The average for the month as a whole 7.8 C. The normal (from 1981 to 2010 — used as climatic reference) is 10.4 C which is the fourth coldest September currently on record since records started being recorded in 1912.
As for precipitation, rainfall was logged at almost 36 mm which is a 63 per cent of average. That ranks as the 20th driest.
The first half of this month looks like it'll be colder than normal according to Castellan. He says they will have to watch and see how the second half goes as well as the beginning of November but the short-term does not look to be getting warmer anytime soon.
