If you thought the month of April was cooler and drier in the Kamloops area, you would be correct.

Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist says that was the case for both Kamloops as well as the Okanagan, which saw a colder and drier April that what people are used to.

“In the Kamloops area, April came out 1.6 degrees colder than average. We had 8.3 C as our average, and it usually is 9.9 C,” he said. “It was drier too. We had about 5 mm of rain, but we usually get 14 mm, so it was only about a third of the normal.”

As for the seasonal outlook across the southwest Interior, for the next few months with both the spring freshet and fire season in the province

“The outlook is definitely on the brighter side in the sense that I looked at the seasonal outlook for May, June, and July and we’re getting into the high likelihood of warmer than average weather for that entire period in the southwest Interior,” he said.

March and April are generally dry months, but Lundquist notes this year was even drier.

“We had some periods even in there where it was warmer than average and the melt came down considerable. So, we kind of had that off and on, which is what I think we need to have,” he noted.

“If its just really hot or really cold, neither of those are good, and the drier certainly helped in the sense that it didn’t add to it, but that does get me concerned about fire weather.”