A heat wave was in full force across Greater Victoria Saturday, with a high of 27 C at the airport.
At Esquimalt Buccaneer Days, Angie Hentze was seeking out shade while waiting for her children to ride the merry-go-round.
“I love that it’s finally warm. I wish it hadn’t skipped from 18 to 28 all at once,” she said. “And shade is my friend.”
Her kids were enjoying the heat, but “they forgot how annoying sunscreen is,” Hentze said.
Emily Holden was armed with a sun hat and a large water bottle to get her through the hot day while watching her kids enjoy the festival’s rides.
The weather was feeling so tropical, Holden said it reminded her of going on vacation. “It kind of feels like when we went to Mexico that one time. We don’t need to go anywhere anymore.”
Isaac Rosas and Rebeca Lozano, who are originally from Mexico, echoed Holden, saying the heat wave is helping them acclimatize before a trip back to Mexico next week.
Lozano said she was glad the temperatures aren’t expected to rise as high as they did a couple of years ago, when Greater Victoria hit 39.8 C. “I wore a swimsuit and I was in the shower every five minutes.”
The heat wave is expected to last through to Thursday, with temperatures of 28 C and 27 C, which is about 10 to 15 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.
In a special weather statement, Environment Canada said the elevated temperatures mean the risk of heat-related illnesses will increase, however the hot conditions will not approach those reached during the late-June 2021 heat dome, which was linked to about 600 deaths in B.C.
Splash parks were busy with children and families trying to cool off. Tara Bouchard brought her two young children to Centennial Park in Langford to escape the heat. Bouchard said she doesn’t love hot temperatures and her one-year-old overheats, so a day at the water park was the perfect thing for them.
“They were both in a much better mood afterwards. They were both ready for a nap,” she said.
Esquimalt opened its water park early for the weekend and was packed with children running through the water.
Jennifer Gavel and her nine-year-old daughter spent a couple of hours escaping the heat in the water park, before heading home to enjoy some air conditioning. “Last year we finally bit the bullet and bought the AC unit because the fans just weren’t cutting it.”
Autumn Maxwell, founder and owner of Cold Comfort Ice Cream in North Park, sold out of about 120 ice cream sandwiches in less than two hours at a market in Fernwood. “I wish I had more ice cream in my little truck,” she said.
The last time she sold out that quickly at the market was the first sunny day of the pandemic, Maxwell said.
Cold Comfort spun 160 litres of ice cream in anticipation of the heat wave, about double what they made last weekend, Maxwell said.
The fire danger rating on the Island moved to moderate on Friday, from low, as outflow winds bring warm, dry air from the Interior, said Julia Caranci, fire information officer for the Coastal Fire Centre. A wildfire on Thunder Mountain about 25 kilometres west of Port Alberni that was reported last week has been declared out, but crews were battling a new 0.7-hectare fire reported about five kilometres north of Port Renfrew, Caranci said.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
