The weekend's snowfall may have been hard to miss but did not quite measure up to the deluge that was delivered on Family Day.
Starting Friday evening and lasting until Sunday morning, 15-25 centimetres fell on the city according to an Environment Canada estimate - plenty enough but still shy of the 30 centimetres that struck the city on February 20.
Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee said a similar pattern was behind both events, which book-ended a deep-freeze for a few days that saw overnight lows drop down to as far as -34.6 C as late as early Friday.
"Last week, we had a rather large Arctic air mass settle over the Prince George region and with those cold temperatures in place, we had a Pacific system with a lot of moisture coming over," said Lee. "As that moisture collided with the cold air in the Interior, it made for great condition for a snowfall event to set up."
He said the first deluge was larger because the temperatures were colder, "making for an even better setup for the snowfall rates and for the snowfall production and the clouds to kind of ramp up."
Prince George was not the only victim this past weekend.
"The cold Arctic air that settled over the Interior made its way out to the Coast as well, and was enough to bring snow to the whole province for the weekend," Lee said and added the month is trending to be one of the wetter Februaries on record.
Another 2-5 cm of snow is forecast to be on its way starting Tuesday night and continuing on Wednesday. Once it ends, daytime highs are to creep above freezing on Friday and Saturday, before dipping back down to sub-zero with a 60-per-cent chance of flurries over Saturday night.
Typical daytime highs for this time of year are around 2 C and -8 C for nighttime lows.
"What we saw last week was definitely below average and as that Pacific air returns, we are anticipating the moderate temperatures to return a little bit more," said Lee.
Some may disagree with Environment Canada's snowfall measurements. Lee said the service relies on sensors located at the airport and at an office on Massey Drive that measure snow on ground rather but may not take into account drift and spindrift.
"I looked at how much snow on the ground changed throughout the whole event, and was able to come up with some snow amounts," Lee said, and added reports from local people are taken into account as well.
As of 2009, the service no longer keeps snowfall records and relies, instead, strictly on precipitation - effectively how much water the snow holds once melted.
Lee said the record amount of precipitation for this time of year is 29.2 millimetres, delivered on Feb. 15, 1913. By comparison, the Family Day event brought 11.9 mm, while the second round was good for 7.8 mm on Saturday and 0.6 mm more on Sunday.
As a rule of thumb, one millimetre of liquid equates to two centimetres of snow but the ratio can be as much as two centimetres of snow for every millimetre of liquid.
"Depending on the temperature regime and what the setup is for the system, it can vary a lot in terms of what the equivalent liquid water is to snowfall," Lee said.
Despite the heavy snowfall, Prince George Airport remained open throughout the weekend.
"Our runways were fully operational thanks to our Operations Team who was keeping the surfaces clear and safe," airport spokesperson Lindsay Andreza said. "Airlines make their own decisions based off of runway conditions at other airports."
On Monday, the City of Prince George issued a heavy snowfall declaration, and extended the timelines for snow clearing from the city's previous heavy snowfall declaration on Feb. 21. Snow clearing will be focused on Priority 1 and Priority 2 roads, and will begin on Priority 3 roads - including most residential streets - with the yellow garbage collection zone.
The city estimated it will take until Saturday to complete snow clearing operations throughout the city.
