Quote:
Originally Posted by FVWinters
The Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade Range has a pronounced wet season in winter and an equally pronounced dry season in the summer. As one moves further south into California this tendency intensifies for locations west of the Sierra Crest.
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And as one moves further north the wet and dry seasons become less pronounced. The North Coast of BC and the Alaskan Panhandle get very wet summers. Once you get to Anchorage, the summers and winters are pretty much even.
Here in BC, it is obviously similar, but also a little complex. As you move north, the wetter summer becomes relative to the rest of the year, but as you move east away from the coast, the wetter summer becomes relative to the rest of the year, BUT eventually you reach the world's only inland temperate rainforest where the summer precipitation makes up a smaller piece of the overall pie again (even though summers are wettest here in absolute terms). Once you move over the Rocky Mountains, summer precipitation makes a much larger percentage of the total.
South-North Example:
Penticton (~50N) = 27% of total precipitation in the summer (93 mm for the season)
Kamloops (~51N) = 32% of total precipitation in the summer (93 mm)
Williams Lake (~52N) = 34% of total precipitation in the summer (166 mm)
Fort St James (~54N) = 31% of total precipitation in the summer (143 mm) //Bucks the trend a little. I suspect that this is because the mountains on the North Coast of BC are smaller.
Dease Lake (~58N) = 36% of total precipitation in the summer (178 mm)
Whitehorse (~61N) = 37% of total precipitation in the summer (121 mm)
Dawson (~64N) = 38% of total precipitation in the summer (139 mm)
Old Crow (~68N) = 42% of total precipitation in the summer (122 mm)
West-East Example:
Tofino (125 W) = 9% of total precipitation in the summer (278 mm) //West Coast
Vancouver (123 W) = 11% of total precipitation in the summer (120 mm) //Sheltered by Vancouver Island
Lytton (121 W) = 13% of total precipitation in the summer (64 mm) //Interior, but gets spill over from the coast in the winter.
Penticton (119 W) = 27% of total precipitation in the summer (93 mm) //Interior dry zone
Kaslo (117 W) = 20% of total precipitation in the summer (158 mm) //Interior rainforest
Cranbrook (116 W) = 29% of total precipitation in the summer (115 mm) //Dry Rocky Mountain Trench
Calgary (114 W) = 48% of total precipitation in the summer (221 mm) //East of the Rockies
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