This Canadian city just marked a whole year without snow

Sunday, November 29, 2015, 1:55 PM - Vancouver is famously mild during the winter, but even so, the city does usually get some accumulation each season.

But as of Sunday, November 29, the city marked an entire year without any accumulating snow at the Vancouver Airport -- a snow drought so rare, it hasn't happened in at least the last 25 years, according to Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton. And that's not even the weird thing about the record.

"It's a paradox: Vancouver hasn't had accumulating snow in a year, but it's having the best start to the ski season in four years," Hamilton says.

It's the snowiest start to the season in those areas since 2011, and a far cry from the last winter, which saw so little snow that forecasters referred to it as a snow drought.

And meanwhile, across the strait, B.C.'s capital of Victoria is even less snowy than Vancouver.

The city hasn't recorded accumulating snow at the airport since the first quarter of 2014, almost two years ago. However, its last snowless year was marked in 1999, a shorter time frame than Vancouver.

Neither city has any snow forecast for the next couple of weeks, but major snowfalls do happen, although they may seem like outliers to people in other provinces.

At the end of 1996, for example, southern B.C. experienced a major snowstorm that dumped more than 100 cm in Vancouver, the island, and the Fraser valley over several days. In Victoria, 80 cm of snow fell on December 28, at the time the third highest one-day snowfall in Canadian history. Across the province, the storm cost $200 million in damage and cleanup costs.

SOURCES: Weather Network | Environment Canada