It's almost mid-May, but where the heck is spring?

It's almost mid-May, but where the heck is spring?
After the second-coldest April ever, we're still a few degrees below normal
Tamara Slobogean May 12, 2011 08:08:14 AM
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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Feeling depressed, irritable, or just a little out of sorts? Maybe you can blame it on the weather.

From bus riders bundled up in toques and under hoods waiting for their rides to binners in extra layers collecting cans and bottles... just about everyone this morning has something to say about this cold snap we just can't shake.

"Right now, I now have a cold," says one man. "I work outdoors, and it wasn't fun yesterday."

"[I see] a lot of dull, grey attitude," a woman tells us. "Like, 'blah.'"

News1130 Meteorologist Russ Lacate tells us we can blame La Nina. "This is a global-scale phenomenon. It's anomalously cold pools of water over the eastern Pacific Ocean that really deflects our jet stream. It lasts for several months, and really messes with the weather pattern."

"I predicted an unusually cold winter that didn't even really materialize until February and March," he adds. "That's when the arctic air arrived. That's when we had the freak snowfalls."

We've got to have some perspective, explains Lacate. "You might think it takes several degrees to really throw the numbers off. But I'd be alarmed by a long-range trend that shows temperatures even two degrees below-average."
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"April was between three and four degrees below normal," he tells us. "It was the second-coldest April of all-time in Metro Vancouver. So far this month, we are averaging about three degrees below normal. Yesterday's high was 11 and the overnight low was about three degrees."