Vancouver dries off after record-breaking rain

Vancouver -

Friday was the wettest Sept. 17 Vancouver has seen since at least 1937, according to Environment Canada.

The weather agency's records for its Vancouver International Airport weather station begin in 1937, and the 50.9 millimetres of rain recorded Friday were the most ever seen on Sept. 17 at YVR.

That total smashed the previous record of 19.1 millimetres recorded at the airport on Sept. 17, 1970.

Another Environment Canada station in Vancouver Harbour has data going back to 1926. It also recorded an all-time high for Sept. 17 on Friday, registering 75.8 millimetres. However, data from that station is not subject to review from the National Climate Archives.

By any measure, Friday was a historically rainy day in Metro Vancouver, the latest date to set a weather record in an already record-breaking year.

Vancouver set a heat record just over a week ago, when the temperature hit 26 C on Sept. 9. That just barely broke the previous record for that date, which was 25.9 C, set in 1989. 

Before that, dozens of heat records fell across the Lower Mainland and around the province during the summer's scorching heat waves.  

Though it's still technically summer for a few more days, Friday's storm felt like the first big storm of fall.

Environment Canada issued rainfall warnings ahead of the storm and BC Hydro warned customers that outages were likely as drought-weakened trees fell onto wires amid strong winds and heavy downpours.  

Sure enough, thousands of BC Hydro customers lost power in Metro Vancouver Friday afternoon and evening, but crews working around the clock had restored electricity to all but a few hundred by late Saturday morning.