B.C.’s two biggest cities have issued an extreme weather alert ahead of a cold snap and urge people who are considering sleeping outside to seek shelter indoors.
“If you are sleeping outside, please come to the safety of the shelters!” said the City of Surrey in a bulletin Monday.
The city’s extreme weather response includes opening up the city’s civic facilities — including the Surrey Welcome Hub — to help people warm up through Oct. 27.
In Vancouver, the municipality said it was opening up extra shelter spaces at the Youth Services Centre at 1138 Burred St. and in the Salvation Army Belkin House at 555 Homer St.
The municipal responses came as Environment and Climate Change Canada forecast nighttime temperatures to hover near zero degrees Celsius, though the city bulletins warned it could feel at or below freezing overnight.
Environment Canada meteorologist Alyssa Charbonneau said overnight lows are expected to fall five to six degrees Celsius below seasonal normals across the Lower Mainland.
“It is a little bit earlier than normal,” she said. “We have this quite cool air mass over top of us.”
Tuesday morning, several daily low temperature records fell across B.C. Residents of Squamish woke up to a record -2.5 C this morning. Port Hardy hit -4 C, beating its previous -2.2 C record set in 1970. And in Merritt, morning temperatures dropped to -8.6 C beating a record that has stood since 1919 at the end of the First World War.
The cooler than normal weather has already led to many of B.C.’s southwest coastal regions receiving their first snowfall of the season this week. On Vancouver Island, Mount Washington received more than 40 centimetres of snow.
Snow also complicated driving conditions on the Coquihalla Highway, which connects the coast to the Interior of the province. Earlier this week, a semi truck hit a snowplow south of Merritt, though there were no reports of any injuries.
Charbonneau said temperatures could return to seasonal normals sometime next week, when wet weather is forecast to return to the coast. But until then, she said people should be aware of the cooler than normal conditions.
“Looking forward, we are expecting several days of cold, clear nights,” Charbonneau said.
With files from Roxanne Egan-Elliott and Nicholas Johansen
