NANAIMO
WE TAKE ANYTHING
www.nanaimobulletin.com
SAME DAY JUNK REMOVAL 778-977-5865 • islandjunk.com
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7, 2024
Scan the QR code for a link to sign up for local news in your e-mail inbox
Nanaimo hit with ‘weather whiplash’ so far in 2024 Month colder than normal, but enough warmth to melt mid Island’s snowpacks CHRIS BUSH NEWS BULLETIN
GO BY BIKE Dan Shaw continues with his commute after a visit with Alex Stanciu, Bike to Work event coordinator with Hub City Cycles, and Sadie Robinson, City of Nanaimo active transportation product specialist, at a Winter GoByBike Week celebration station at Metral Drive and Mostar Road the morning of Monday, Feb. 5. For the story, see page A27. (Chris Bush/News Bulletin)
Vancouver Island Exhibition will become a fall fair moving its event a month later than in recent years, to Sept. 20-22. The VIEX is becoming a According to a press refall fair. lease from the VIEX, the Nanaimo’s Vancouver Is- fair changed its dates in land Exhibition announced 2019 to be able to partner Friday, Feb. 2, that it will be with its preferred mid-
STAFF WRITER NEWS BULLETIN
way operator, West Coast Amusements, but the date change meant that the past few years, the VIEX has been on the same weekend as the Comox Valley Exhibition, which has led to fewer entries in livestock
and 4-H divisions. Organizers say since the agricultural component of the fair is so important, the VIEX will go back to its roots as a fall fair, 130 years after it was first held in October 1894. Continued on A14
Presented by
The new year has rung in its first month with extreme temperatures and precipitation, breaking records that had stood in Nanaimo-Ladysmith for more than a century. An arctic vortex that brought sub-freezing air and snow from the Arctic one week was countered days later by the balmy winds of a Pineapple Express from the Pacific Ocean that swept away ice and snow with heavy warm rains. “This has been one weather whiplash of a month, I’ll say that much,” said Armel Castellan, Environment Canada meteorologist. Despite recent warm air flowing over B.C.’s south coast from the south Pacific
Ocean, January was actually 0.7 C cooler than normal, overall, at 2.8 C compared to the month’s normal average of 3.5 C. And it was wet. “We started with some pretty big snow events and a lot of rain, as well, at the start of the month and at the end,” Castellan said. Storms dumped 273 millimetres of rain and snow for the month, about 45 per cent more than the normal 188mm, making January 2024 the 13th wettest since record-keeping started in 1892. “Of course, that’s coming on the heels of dryness in November, December, so that’s one thing of note. What I’ll also say is with the extremes … the devil’s in the details,” Castellan said. Continued on A31