Will January bring more wild, winter weather to Metro Vancouver?

The start of the New Year will bring some relief from the extreme weather seen in Metro Vancouver at the end of 2022, according to a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Alyssa Charbonneau tells CTV News that the forecast for January doesn’t call for frigid temperatures or significant snow.

"Looking into the beginning of January we are seeing warmer than normal conditions setting up for the month. We don't see a return to those bitterly cold arctic outflow conditions or any very cool conditions setting up in the near-term," she said.

As the year wound down, Charbonneau notes, the region experienced frigid overnight temperatures and significant dumps of snow.

"December was absolutely record-breaking," she said.

Communities across the province saw low-temperature records shattered, and in Abbotsford and Vancouver, the amount of snow that accumulated was more than 200 per cent of what is considered normal, according to Charbonneau. 

The blast of winter weather threw a wrench in many people's holiday plans as Vancouver's airport saw mass flight cancellations. Travel advisories were issued for the province's major highways with officials urging people not to travel unless it was essential. Warnings were issued about the dangers of being exposed to the cold, particularly for the region's significant homeless population.

"I think sometimes, in the Lower Mainland, we tend to think we're immune from it. But no we can have snow and it can last for some time. And so that is one type of weather that we do need to be prepared to face and to know how to stay safe when that occurs," she told CTV News.

Charbonneau pointed out that the extreme conditions followed a year that saw an extremely long and wet spring, a hot and dry summer that drought conditions – followed what seemed like a negligible autumn.

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Lauren Pullen