A mid-April blast of wintery weather Thursday is breaking records on B.C.'s south coast and blanketing neighbourhoods with snow in the Fraser Valley.
In Abbotsford, residents awoke to piles of snow on their cars and crushing spring flowers.
"I had to put my glasses on because I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Deborah Campbell said.
CTV Meteorologist Michael Kuss says this was a day for the record books.
"Records have been kept in Abbotsford since 1945, and we haven't had snow on this day since, so there's a new record," he said.
By the end of the afternoon, even downtown Vancouver was experiencing unseasonal snowfall.
Kuss says temperatures on the south coast have been about six degrees cooler than normal this April.
"To get a stretch of cold days in April is not uncommon at all, but when you have 16 straight days where the daytime high doesn't surpass the norm, well that's pretty rare," he says.
The weather has put a freeze on the golf season at Ledgeview Golf and Country Club in Abbotsford.
"It's been awful. We've seen rainouts, we've seen frost delays that have lasted until noon and now snow," pro-shop clerk Kyle Hadwin said.
Nursery sales are lagging too, because planting in the cold can be risky.
"Most of the warm weather annuals can not go out yet. They're not going to do well -- they're going to sit in the soils and they're going to sulk," said Debbie Ego at Cannor Nursery.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Michele Brunoro
