howardk

..........is this possible...........do people do this ..........?

Steve_P

With the potential for low cloud along with the rain in the winter I wouldn't want to count on the float plane for everyday travel.

acer rose

Not to mention the shortened winter hours of operation (no landing lights on the water!). The helijet becomes the only (more expensive) option. I would also suggest that it isn't realistically practical unless you can telecommute.

Steve_P

Good point, I wasn't even thinking about the much shorter day.

acer rose

Got caught out with that one last winter

jerry brewer

Hi
We live in north van, near the second narrows bridge, some days it's dry here and we go up to upper lonsdale and it's raining, same with the snow..
The main thing here I find is to me there seems to be no wind/driving rain, like where we lived in the UK ( south devon).
Ok, before all the replies come in, there were the famous wind storms the other year at stanley park, but even in the winter I don't notice any 'biting wind' and a fair portion of my job is outdoors all year.
True it does rain, but when the sun comes out in summer wow..
nothing like driving over the north / west van bridges after a bad day at work... the view is awesome eh! as they say, to us, for quality of life we have here,the bit of rain is small in comparism.
' but to each his own '
cheers
jerry

bazzz

We went out for a walk in North Van today and there was still a few inches of snow on the ground in places. True, that.

jeks

Don't confuse amount of rain with number of days of rain. That's a mistake a lot of people make when they see the rainfall figures.

I've lived in North Van now for 8 years.

It rains. It can rain A LOT. On the whole though, the rainfall here is much heavier than in the UK. I'm from the South of England, the 2nd driest spot in the UK.

Some figures scrounged up from the net:

Vancouver on average sees only 166 days per year with measurable rainfall.

Compare that to the *driest* part of the UK that sees 150 days per year of measurable rainfall.

Now during those 166 days it can rain a LOT as I've said ... ;o)

It can also rain hard for days on end making it feel wetter.

But when the sun comes out there's no better place on earth to live, or so I feel anyway.

Don't let a dry figure (forgive the pun) of 2000+ mm put you off Vancouver. It's a truly amazing place to live.

A good page on Vancouver weather can be found on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Vancouver

gibsonslanding

hi judy

any stats on the amount of sunshine in the vancouver area? personally, i quite like the rain.....call me wierd if you like, but i like gardening!!!!!

Summer-Caitlin

jeks

Thank you for your informative post. My husband and I are moving to North Vancouver in May/June 2009 (if the house sells) and I was beginning to get very nervous about the rain. I grew up in Australia and I am used to drier days, however your post has made me more confident. I didn't think that it was just more rain on an already rainy day, rather than rain every other day. This makes it much more bearable

I actually love heavy rain, I hate the drizzly rain and if it's already raining then it might as well continue all day! I live in Scotland and we see a lot of rain here and it's the drizzly kind, can be freezing at times too.

As you say though, I bet the view is fantastic when it's clear and it sure outweighs the rain, not what can be said for here...

Surrey Expat

You can get the climate norms from Environment Canada http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec....s/index_e.html

Don't let anyone kid you, it rains a lot in the lower mainland though the winter. Some winters are worse than others. We have had some Octobers with over 350mm in one month. It's something you get used to. Spring is mixed, summers are generally more consistently nice, from July to Sept as a rule.

When there is an outflow in the winter we can have sunshine for 3 weeks straight, and temperatures down to -11c or so. One of the big issues that we have to contend with is the smog, from industry, vehicles and methane & from the manure spreaders, it gets trapped in the valley when there is a high sitting on us, like now. The sky looks bright blue when you look up, looking down is a whole other story.

Came back from the interior the other day and the lower mainland is easy to find, just head to the smog. This is not cloud shrouding the valley, once on the ground it looks like a clear blue sky.

jeks

Summer-Caitlin, I'm glad I could help. Sunny days is what people should be quoting, not rainfall figures.

I'm used to the South of England, which is pretty dry for England, but we get a lot of those grey days where it just drizzles off and on. I used to hate that.

That happens a lot less here. I'd say overall that the number of sunny days are the same, or there are even more here.

However, when it rains it can rain *hard* and stay doing that for a few days. I still remember my first 'Vancouver rain'. I thought it would pass in 5 minutes, it was so heavy, so I stayed in the store I was in! That rain lasted the entire day.

I personally like that - it's weather you can feel.

Also (and I don't know whether this is true or not, but it's my impression) Vancouver tends to have the heavy rains at night and you wake up to a sunny morning.

Nothing like hearing a really heavy rain batter the rooftops for making you feel good about being cozy inside.

Another upside for Vancouver vs the rest of Canada - it is rain! The snow stays where it's fun - up on the mountains. When I first came to Canada I snowboarded a lot - so there was an upside to the rain - it meant more good snow on the local mountains.

From North or West Van, you can be up to Cypress, Grouse, or Seymour mountains within 20 minutes or so. So if the rain is getting you down, go do some skiing/boarding ...

gibsonslanding

thanks surrey expat, that's a great site, full of info.....

gibsonslanding

lol.......my brother in calgary says 'the bigger the back yard, the bigger the snow store'......

howardk

this is true,we have a few acres here in ottawa and it was a metre + deep for nearly 4 1/2 months last winter......