Mother Nature delivers soggy, windy Christmas for parts of B.C.

CHILLIWACK — It will be a long time before some coastal residents in B.C. forget the weather they were forced to endure on Christmas Day in 2023.

According to Environment Canada, its Kennedy Lake Forestry weather station on the west coast of Vancouver Island near Clayoquot Sound received a whopping 178 mm of rain over the 24 hours of December 25. The airport in Port Hardy saw 64 cm of rain or a little more than two feet of precipitation. But that was still only about a third of the amount of rain that fell at the Kennedy Lake Forestry station.

Wind gusts of 172 km/h were recorded off the northern tip of Vancouver Island at the Sartine weather station. The storm was widespread, stretching north to the Sandspit airport in Haida Gwaii, where instruments recorded a wind gust of 128 km/h.

The weather system also packed warm temperatures. Bella Bella on B.C.’s Central Coast set a new record high of 12.9, breaking the old record of 12.6 set in 1980.