Mountain Weather Forecast

A very well defined warm front extending through northern Oregon early this morning will push northwards to lie through southern Vancouver Island by late this afternoon spreading rain to southern BC. Significant rainfall and wind will impact parts of the South Coast today, especially on the west side of Vancouver Island. Freezing levels near 1100 metres over the south coast this morning will jump markedly to 2500 metres this afternoon while the southwest interior will see freezing levels rising above 2500 metres from early this evening. As the milder air pushes northwards behind the warm front, temperatures will remain steady or even rise a couple degrees overnight. Snow is expected over the central interior tonight in advance of the front as the milder air interacts with the colder airmass already in place.

On Tuesday morning, the warm front will extend through the central BC coast giving rain to coastal sections and periods of snow across parts of the central interior. The inner south coast and the southern interior will be in the warm sector on Tuesday morning giving relatively mild and dry conditions. On Tuesday afternoon a cold front will move across the south coast into the BC interior giving periods of rain to most of the Columbia and Kootenay regions. Freezing levels will fall behind the cold front with the south coast seeing showers in an unstable onshore flow except for flurries above 1000 metres. A ridge of high pressure persisting over the Yukon on Tuesday will help give windy conditions over most of the northwestern interior with blowing snow developing in the afternoon.

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The 500mb animation depicted above shows an upper trough extending from the northeast to the southwest through the Gulf of Alaska this morning. The trough will rotate westwards to lie off the southwest BC coast on Tuesday morning generating a strong southwesterly flow across southern BC with an upper ridge strengthening over Alberta. The upper trough, and the associated upper low centre near Haida Gwaii, will gradually weaken and by Thursday the southwesterly flow over BC will ease somewhat and veer to westerly.