The evenings may be cooling down but don't pack up the sunglasses just yet.
The Lower Mainland is likely to bask in some continued balmy weather in the coming weeks, despite the official start of fall on Monday evening.
A weak El Niño weather pattern is pointing to warmer than usual temperatures and drier than normal conditions to continue into the fall, said Dayna Vettese, meteorologist with the Weather Network, which recently released its predictions heading into the autumn season.
The pattern is a continuation of what the West Coast experienced over the summer months, when average temperatures were a couple of degrees above normal and only about half the usual rain fell.
Dry conditions were a result of "a big ridge in the jet stream" that remained semi-permanent over the West Coast for most of the summer - and also resulted in drought in California.
Expect a continuation of that trend, said Vettese.
So far, daytime high temperatures are still hovering one or two degrees above normal for September, said Andre
Besson, meteorologist with Environment Canada.
Those will cool slightly, and we can still expect some day-to-day showers, but the overall warmer-anddrier pattern will continue, he said.
Normally, the Lower Mainland sees between 350 and 400 millimetres of rainfall between September and November. But this year, "We expect to be a lot drier than that going forward," said Vettese.
It's possible the same El Niño-influenced weather pattern will continue through winter as well.
To make seasonal predictions, meteorologists
look at long-range weather models that include patterns like El Niño or La Niña connected to ocean temperatures. They also look at statistics for past years that have had similar weather patterns.
In June, meteorologists predicted that summer would be hotter and drier than usual on the B.C. coast - which turned out to be accurate.
Other parts of the country probably won't have such an enjoyable fall and winter season.
Long-range forecasts east of the Rockies are for below-average winter temperatures.
