Cloudy with chance of clouds: Iqaluit’s never-ending forecast

See those gray clouds in the background, Iqalungmiut? Get used to them. (PHOTO BY DAVID MURPHY)

Iqaluit residents: get ready for another few weeks of discouraging, wet spring weather.

Meteorologist Brian Proctor with Environment Canada said he can’t “offer anything in the way of optimism from the forecast point of view at this point, unfortunately,” for Iqaluit.

That’s a polite way of saying, put the sunscreen away, it’s going to be cloudy and cool for the next couple of weeks.

And if you haven’t already noticed, it’s been raining non-stop in July. In fact, Iqaluit is already over its normal amount of precipitation for the month.

Proctor said that in just 12 days of July, Iqaluit saw 66.2 millimetres of rain.

The normal for the entire month of July is 51.9 mm.

“So in just a little over a third of the month, you’ve already received more precipitation than you could expect for the whole month,” Proctor said.

And the forecast doesn’t look good. From Tuesday night to Thursday morning, another 30 mm of rain is expected to fall.

June wasn’t so hot either. Usually June sees 33 mm of rain, but this June saw 47.6 mm — that’s 30 per cent more rain than usual.

So, what’s with all the rain?

It’s because of the dreaded “polar vortex” from this past winter, which is actually still continuing.

“This is really a continuation of the cold winter you guys received with that really strong Arctic vortex,” Proctor said.

“And it’s persisting into the summer. It’s moderating, of course, but it’s really not changing the fundamental flow pattern at this point,” he said.

That, plus a flow of warm weather coming from western Canada, means rain.

Western Canada is struggling with an abnormally dry season so far this summer, resulting in thousands of disastrous wild fires stretching from the Yukon and into Saskatchewan.

There is a bit of a bright spot coming for Iqaluit, however. Environment Canada’s seven-day forecast predicts sunny skies and double-digit temperatures on the weekend.

But sadly, that won’t mean a fundamental change to weather patterns, he said. The sunny interval is expected to give way to more rain next week.

“Hopefully I’m wrong,” Proctor said.