We now know how many lightning strikes hit Metro Vancouver during the wild weekend thunderstorm that roared across the region Saturday night into Sunday morning. Environment Canada meteorologist Jennifer Kowal says there were 1,725 strikes, which is double the previous record for Metro Vancouver in the system that’s now used for measuring electrical storms. “Previously in this lightning detection network and its history, the most ever recorded was 869, and that was in August of 2013,” said Kowal, who noted the current system has only been in place since 2013 as well. In comparison, previous thunderstorms this summer recorded 128 and 139 lightning strikes, respectively. “So it was much more active than what we’re used to here,” said Kowal. The storm also dropped a huge amount of rain in a short period of time. “Over near Horseshoe Bay, Eagle Ridge, they got 53 mm of rain. The airport itself got 44. But we also had some really high hourly amounts—so we had 24 mm per hour down at the airport, which is a lot per hour,” Kowal said. The meteorologist said the direction the system was coming from that made it very unusual. “Instead of the moisture feed coming from the west, normally most of our weather comes from the west or maybe a bit southwesterly, the feed of moisture was coming from the south. And so it was just a warmer, more humid air mass than what we normally would have,” she said. “It led to it being a very, very active, juicy storm: lots of rain, lots of lightning,” Kowal added. One of those lightning strikes sparked a small wildfire near Lions Bay. Several homes were placed on eviction alert Sunday night, but that has now been rescinded as crews got a handle on the smouldering ground fire. While lightning strikes are unfortunate during wildfire season, Kowal said the rain that accompanied this storm was helpful. “We’re not quite out of thunderstorm season yet, but now at least there’s a little bit more water on the ground to tamp down some of that fuel for fires.”
