A few warm days has cherry blossoms beginning to burst in B.C.’s capital

CHEK

WATCH: The beginning of February has been a couple degrees warmer than normal and that has cherry blossoms already putting on a show. April Lawrence reports.

Head to the Inner Harbour and you’ll see a scene straight out of a City of Victoria tourism advertisement ? B.C.’s legislature bordered by blue skies and cherry blossoms in early February.

While some in the area are dressed in shorts and others are carrying their jackets in their arms, others that are still donning toques and scarves appear to have been caught off guard by the double digital temperatures.

“I hadn’t expected it to be that warm,” said Ben Koestler, a German tourist who came to Victoria from Calgary.

“It’s like spring already, like real spring, I mean [I] fly back to Germany on Thursday and I hope we have the same weather there,” he joked.

The spring-like warmth isn’t typical, it’s usually at least a couple of degrees cooler in early February.

“The normal for this time of year usually about eight degrees for the day and the night time temperature seems to dip down to two degrees, so far though in the last five days we’ve seen four days where our afternoon highs were in the low teens,” said Environment Canada Meteorologist Cindy Yu.

But to be fair, most of the past month has been dark, grey, and wet but still warmer than usual.

“With the number of low-pressure systems rolling across the southern B.C. in the last month or so the average temperature has been on the warm side because the air mass themselves are coming off the ocean,” said Yu.

The stretch of warm weather has cherry blossoms bursting.

Rebecca Lin and her husband were sure to capture them on camera before they head back to Taiwan.

“[We have] lots of those in Taiwan so now this is the season, so I’m so surprised that I can see it here,” she said.

But as much as we like to boast about our beautiful winter weather, one only has to look back one year to find a very different Victoria view. Flights were grounded and schools were closed after a blast of winter dumped 20 centimetres of snow in the Capital Region.

This year, there will likely be more blossoms in the days ahead with the double-digit temperatures expected to continue.

April LawrenceApril Lawrence

Recent Stories

Send us your news tips and videos!