With the arrival of spring this week, comes worry over the weather & wildfires that summer may bring.
Environment Canada senior climatologist Dave Philips says although the spring equinox typically marks the end of winter, he feels like winter never truly arrived.
"I call it "the lost season." It was fleeting; fickle. I've been following weather patterns for half a century and I've never seen numbers like this."
Philips says statistics show last season was Canada's warmest winter on record.
He says it was 5.2C warmer than normal from December to February, shattering the previous record by more than one degree celcius.
He says there are some major overlapping factors driving the warmer-than-normal temperatures, including human-caused climate change and the natural El Nino climate pattern.
The wildfire season in B.C. officially begins on Aptil 1st. However, there are currently 97 wildfires burning in the province, two new fires sparked just this week.
A number of those 97 fires are holdovers in the northeast; fires that have smouldered through the winter.
BC Wildfire Service operations director Cliff Chapman says some parts of the province need between 40 and 60 millimetres of rain over two weeks to return the parched ground to what he would consider a "neutral state''.
An update from forecasters says new human-caused fires have already occurred this early in the year due of warm, dry, windy conditions.
This, as the BC government introduces technology that can produce real-time wildfire behaviour predictions and incorporate information directly from the field.
The Province is also providing $80-million in funding to help farmers combat drought and other climate disasters.
BC Premier David Eby says the funding is preparing for worst case scenarios already experienced in a short period of time.