More than a dozen B.C. temperature records broken as warm spell continues

More than a dozen temperature records were broken across B.C.'s South Coast and Vancouver Island Wednesday as a warm spell continued for a third day.

In White Rock, a daytime high of 19 C beat the previous March 20 record of 17.8 C set back in 1968.

Over in West Vancouver, the mercury reached 20 C, 1.2 C higher than the 1999 record.

The 20.1 C record set in Squamish that same year also fell Wednesday as temperatures reached 26 C.

Further inland, those margins were even wider.

Hope saw a daytime high of 26 C – a full 9 C higher than the all-time record set in 2010. The situation was similar in Agassiz, where the mercury reached 24 C.

Abbotsford's 25 C high topped a nearly six-decade record of 22.2 C, while Chilliwack and Pitt Meadows saw their warmest days since the late 1990s. Merritt and Langley also set new March 20 records.

Things were no different on Vancouver Island, where temperatures in Victoria reached a balmy 21 C Wednesday. The city's previous record was set in 1999 at 18.3 C.

Nanaimo saw the same daytime high, breaking its 59-year record of 18.3 C.