Heat wave continues on Vancouver Island and across much of B.C.

Vancouver Island heat breaks records Temperature records fell on Vancouver Island this week, while calls for heat-related ambulance service surged up.

The heat has arrived on Vancouver Island as forecasted and the mercury bubbled up quickly.

Throughout B.C., records are being broken consistently with 16 records set on Saturday and 31 more on Sunday.

British Columbia wasn’t the only province breaking records as Alberta did the same throughout the weekend.

A spokesperson for B.C. Emergency Health Services says it received 54 heat-related calls in the first two weeks of May, including 38 calls on May 13 and 14.

That is an increase from the 10 heat-related calls paramedics received in all of May 2022, accoring to BCEHS.

Ten of the 54 calls were for service on Vancouver Island, while nearly half were in the Fraser Valley region.

Most of B.C. remains under a special weather statement with the overnight lows being on the cooler side and giving us that relief from the heat of the day.

Once area did get upgraded to a heat warning was the north coast, including Terrace.

That warning will remain in place until Thursday with daytime highs being 30 degrees or warmer and overnight lows only dropping to 15 degrees or more overnight.

For Vancouver Island, most areas were 10 to 15 degrees warmer than normal with Tofino hitting 27.7 C on Saturday.

While that Tofino temperature wasn’t a record, it’s an impressive high for the middle of May.

Sunday saw more records broken as the heat continues to spread itself out in Western Canada. The hotspot on the records list was Squamish at 35.8, downing the old record of 29.2.

While this ridge of high pressure sticks around for the rest of the week, we will slowly cool down and by the end of the week and into the long weekend we’ll see temperatures just five to eight degrees above seasonal as opposed to the 10 to 15 degree higher temps we’ve been dealing with.

After the May long weekend, the ridge will have moved out of the area and as it stands right now we could see some rain for a few days.

That would be perfect timing after a run of hot and dry conditions. While that is still a week away, we hope that the modeling holds up and we do see some of the moisture.