Prince George, B.C. – It’s just the news northerners want to hear as they prepare to ‘summerize’ their cabins and dig out their flip flops – it looks like Prince George can look forward to a warmer than average summer.

“We’re looking at a very warm summer,” says Brett Anderson, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather – the world’s largest private weather company based in Pennsylvania. “Based on the projected weather pattern, we believe temperatures are going to average above normal for the summer.”

And with the increase in temperatures, he says that’s going to favour the chance of below normal rainfall.

“Especially in the valleys. The exception I think will be the mountains where with this type of pattern we typically see thunderstorms more common during July and August in the mountainous areas.”

What does he attribute his forecast too?

“Well, if we go back to last year, we had a pocket of very warm water off our coast known as the big blob,” says Anderson.

“That’s gone now and with the cooler waters, that would tend to reduce the potential moisture for some of these fronts coming in off the Pacific. And it would tend to favour more of a high-pressure zone developing across Western Canada.”

Does that heighten the risk for a long wildfire season?

“As you get into the northers parts of the province and northern parts of Alberta, we still have some dry conditions and that’s what we look at in the spring – how dry it is,” he says.

“If it’s still dry that would signal an early start to the summer heat and if you get the early start to the summer heat it’s going to tend to be dry. So, I’m not predicting it’s going to be a real busy season but the weather conditions would give us more concern that usual across northern parts of British Columbia and northern Alberta for the summer.”