On Jan 27, 9:41*pm, John Hall wrote:
In article
,



*Alastair writes:
On Jan 27, 6:34*pm, John Hall wrote:
In article ,

*Col writes:

"John Hall" wrote in message
.. .
In article ,
John Hall writes:
In article ,
Col writes:
I'm wondering about coastal British Columbia, the latitude
equivalent of the UK on the western side of North America.
Oceanic westerly winds yes, but no eqivalent warm current
to the North Altantic Drift. I'm sure this area isignificantly cooler
than the UK.

I thought that they *did* have a warm current there, so perhaps less
powerful than the NAD. Judging by the temperatures I see in the
newspaper each day for Vancouver, the winters in coastal BC don't seem
any colder than ours. In fact I have the impression that if anything
they tend to have less really cold weather than we do, perhaps because
of the blocking effect of the Rockies.

Just looked it up on Wikipedia. In both December and January Vancouver's
mean max is 6C and the mean min is 1C; February is a bit warmer. So very
much the same as our values. However their coldest ever month, January
1950, was considerably colder than our coldest, with a monthly mean of
-6.3C

But Vancouver is situated at 49° 15'N, further south than any point
in the UK and yet for such an oceanic location, it still has just 6C
as it's January max, considerably lower than Cornwall though I accept
that Cornwall is even more maritime than Vancouver.

One factor may be that their northerlies will be considerably colder
than ours, since IIRC the orientation of the coast is such that winds
from that direction will have had a long land track (and before that
probably over Arctic Ocean ice).

I think it is the influence of ocean currents. Because the Pacific is
so much larger than the Atlantic, its eastern boundary current is
cold. *Seehttp://www.kidsgeo.com/images/ocean-current.jpg

Cheers, Alastair.

This map on Wikipedia tells a rather different story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co...-oceanicas.gif

It suggests that Vancouver would benefit from the relatively warm Alaska
Current. See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Current

Note that it is relatively warm! The Wikipedia entry states "Alaska
Current water is characterized by temperatures above 39°F (4°C)"

Cheers, Alastair