Thirty-degree weather is usually reserved for summer months, not early spring, but people in Port Alberni are bracing for a hot one today.

The forecast high for Port Alberni is 30°C today. That’s twice as hot as the seasonal average high temperature for this time of year! The mercury should be around the 15-degree mark in mid-April.

Today’s scorcher follows two days of temperatures reaching 27.9°C in the valley. While impressive, it wasn’t hot enough to break records Monday or Tuesday. Today, we may be close. The record high temperature for April 20th in Port Alberni is 30.6°C, set in 1934.

Records could fall again today in a number of other communities on Vancouver Island. Here are the three island towns that Environment Canada says broke records on Tuesday:

New records set Tuesday April 19th (in °C)

Campbell River area
New record of 22.1
Old record of 22.0 set in 1988

Malahat area
New record of 23.0
Old record of 20.5 set in 1991

Victoria Harbour area
New record of 22.4
Old record of 19.9 set in 2015

All week I’ve been asked how unusual this weather pattern is. There’s no question, this is an unseasonably strong ridge of high pressure. Every once in a while we get warm spells in spring, but we expect them in May, not April. What’s unusual to me is that it’s the second time this month we’ve had a strong ridge of high pressure push our temperatures above 20°C and to record levels. In fact, it’s twice in two weeks!

Looking ahead to the end of the week and the weekend, this upper ridge breaks down and we’ll see a bit of a cool-down as the marine layer pushes onshore. There will be some light precipitation, but by no means a dramatic downpour, and temperatures will return to seasonal average (14°C n Victoria, 15°C in Port Alberni). So make sure you get an ice cream today; summer-in-April is wrapping up and we’ll be back to unsettled spring before the weekend.