It seems that a lot of people think that Victoria Day weekend is always a particularly bad weather weekend. I have even written a blog entry on the subject here:
http://uwweatherstation.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-does-queen-victoria-have-against.html
This time let's look at precipitation, first off on average it rains about 1/3 of the days of May. So we would expect that on average it should rain one of the days of a 3 day long weekend. Over the past 12 years the breakdown of days with rain is as follows: 0 - 15%, 1 - 55%, 2-15%, 3-15%. I'm not sure of the actual probability distribution of such a series, but it seems pretty well what we would expect. It is also hard to make many conclusions with such a small sample.
Also interesting is that compared to other weekends (Sat, Sun, Mon) in May there is actually a better chance for 1 day or less of rain during the Victoria Day weekend. Or put another way there has been a greater chance for 2 or more days of rain during the other weekends of the month in the past 12 years.
And an update on temperatures during the Victoria Day holiday weekend, looking back at the last 12 of them (ie. the time the UW weather station has been around), it is true that about two-thirds have been colder than average. Random chance suggests we should be closer to 50/50. The forecast for this weekend looks like it might be the warmest in quite some time.
As I said in the last post about this topic, it is always the Victoria Day weekends that are really cold or wet that people seem to remember. Hopefully everyone can enjoy this weekend no matter what the weather.
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Dr. Seglenieks, I'm always curious, but is it true that our spring (March, May, April) has been getting colder last decade (01-10) when compared with the previous 30 year climate normals (1970-2000)? I know that this is true for May, which, of the last 10 (excluding this year), 6 had been colder than average.
On a flip note, it seems like our Autumn (September, October, October) has been getting warmer instead. Last year, you actually noted that 9 of the last 10 September's had been above average (and the only one that was below average was less than a degree colder than average). Any idea why this is so? Or are we on the verge of the so-called climate change?
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