An optional errand in Metrotown provided all the justification needed to step out into the morning air. Boarding below Carnarvon Street, the SkyTrain tracks climbed the grade through South Burnaby under a brilliant sun, an almost scandalous sight for late October in the Lower Mainland. Morning runs beat the crowds. The month began typically enough with a couple of damp, gloomy days, and another brief spell of grey crept into the middle of the calendar. Aside from those interruptions, it has been blue sky day after day.
The streak feels miraculous. Mark the weatherman on Global News confirmed just how anomalous this autumn has been, pointing to rainfall totals that read like misprints. A standard October in our corner of the West Coast drowns under roughly 157 millimeters of rain. The contrast is startling. As of today, the gauges at Vancouver Airport sit at a mere 14.3 millimeters. That places us, for the moment, beneath the all-time historic record low of 18.3 millimeters logged back in October 2002. Were the ledger to close this afternoon, it would stand as the driest October since bookkeeping began. The month still has a week to run, however, and that slim buffer will not survive the weekend.
Tomorrow will break the streak, though forecasters expect the front to sweep through quickly. That leaves roughly a week of decent, manageable weather to close out the month before our departure on November 1st. Time is ticking down. It remains to be seen where October 2026 ultimately lands in the provincial record books once the incoming system delivers its payload. Until then, one simply takes the gift of dry pavement and crisp light on an unhurried ride across Burnaby.
