Early season snowfall didn’t last for Metro Vancouver mountains

As the sun broke through the clouds on the peak of Mount Seymour late Saturday morning, one thing became painfully clear: There wasn’t much snow.

“The snow’s pretty wet,” said Kim Barrett, who had spent the morning on the hills. “It’s a little bit chewed up and there’s not a whole lot of it.”

Despite the unusually heavy snowfall in November, local mountains received significantly less snow this season than in recent years. And warmer temperatures through December melted much of the earlier snowpack.

Snowpack on B.C.’s South Coast is only 70 per cent of normal and down 36 per cent from last year, according to the latest snowpack bulletin released Tuesday from the B.C. River Forecast Centre.

That means considerably less snow for Metro Vancouver’s ski hills. Cypress received 259 centimetres of snowfall this season, compared with 450 cm around the same time last year.