Falling leaves, low  water level in the Nechako, mark  the season – photo250News

Prince George, B.C.-  Although it may seem like fall has been with  us  since mid August, autumn officially arrived in Prince George at 1:22 this morning.

The Autumnal Equinox  is the time when day and night are each about 12 hours long  (although  in the Northern Hemisphere,  the  actual  time of equal  day and night happens a few days later).

Environment Canada Meteorologist for the BC Interior, Doug Lundquist says  it’s  a little difficult to predict  how this transition season from Summer to Winter is going to shape up “We’re in a bit  of a cool pattern now, so it’s  swinging between average ( temperatures) to cooler than average.  But in the longer term, as we approach winter, it will become more and more clear that we are really likely to have a warmer than average winter.”

And that’s because of the effects of El Nino, the  large body of warm water in the  Pacific, ” It usually results in a warmer than average winter and this one ( El Nino) is particularly strong.”

So does warmer than average  mean  heavy wet snow? “More than likely”  says Lundquist, “We often hover around the zero mark for much of early  winter, so it’s more likely that any precipitation we would get  would be in the form of wet  snow or rain, more than  usual for the winter. But the amount of  precipitation in this kind of pattern is really difficult to forecast often the  storm systems move through the northern part of   the Province  and clip the Prince George area, so it’s just a matter of  whether  the storm  gets Mackenzie or further north more,  or slips  its way down to Prince George, so the amount of precipitation  is hard to forecast,  but certainly the temperature regime is looking   very mild.”

August was a little cooler than average, with the  average temperature last month being 14.2 degrees,  when the  normal average is 15.  As for rainfall,   it may have seemed like August was overly wet,  but  the average is 52 mm of rain during August, and Prince George received 45mm last  month.

So the bottom line is  cooler than normal for October and early November, but  Lundquist says usually in an El Nino winter  the effects of El Nino really kick in by Christmas,  but there is a twist, says Lundquist, as El Nino started much earlier this year “So I’m wondering  if perhaps  we will get into that mild pattern sooner,  perhaps as early as  November or early December.”