You know those climate-disaster movies where the rogue scientist bursts into the Oval Office with a seemingly outlandish end-of-days prediction of Mother Nature going off her nut?
Think Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow, or John Cusack in 2012. Everybody pooh-poohs the guy until New York City gets swamped by a tsunami and frozen like the popsicle you were dreaming of last week. Then it’s vindication time, with all the establishment experts ruefully admitting the rogue was right and they should have listened to what the science was telling them but they refused to believe.
Which brings us to what happened at Environment Canada, where they actually did believe what the weather models were telling them before last week’s heat wave. The scientists, when confronted with what must at first have seemed like unbelievable data, had the gumption to warn that we were about to be hit with heat that would not just break but shatter all-time records.
“It was quite an astounding forecast to look at as a meteorologist,” says Environment Canada’s Lisa Erven.
The key elements were there, though. First came the pattern recognition, seeing the ridge of high pressure bring a mass of hot air to B.C. Then it was a matter of figuring out whether the ridge would blow through or stick around for several days, the heat building and building and building. “It was the latter that unfolded during our extreme heat event of last week,” Erven says.
Usually B.C. doesn’t see serious heat waves until the end of July or early August, but this one arrived close to the summer solstice, which complicated things. It’s the time of year when we have the most hours of daylight and the sun is at its strongest. “Both of those factors contributed to the high temperatures,” Erven said.
Predicting what was coming wasn’t really like the movies. The indicators were pretty solid. Remember that Environment Canada had already issued a previous heat warning in June, a short-duration one on the Father’s Day weekend.
It helped that the forecast from Canada’s weather-modelling system matched those from the systems used by other countries. “We weren’t just analyzing what our own models were predicting,” Erven said. “That gave us some degree of confidence.”
On June 23, Environment Canada issued a warning that a “dangerous, long-duration” blast of heat was coming, carrying the risk of illness and wildfire. “That’s quite potent wording that we reserve for more extreme events,” Erven said.
Still, when the heat actually arrived, the reality was stunning. When the temperature reached 49.6 C in Lytton on June 29, it was a full 4.6 degrees hotter than the previous Canadian record. That’s astounding. “It’s mind-boggling that we actually experienced these temperatures for multiple days in a row,” Erven said.
It brought us into new territory. A concrete median buckled in the West Shore. Sidewalks heaved up from Qualicum to Kelowna. To the south of us, Americans warn high water temperatures threaten salmon runs. We’re hearing of massive loss of foreshore marine life. Berry crops cooked in their fields. Then there was the terrible human toll.
The big question now is whether, having been subjected to previously unimaginable heat, B.C. can expect round two. Given that this is still just the beginning of July, and that B.C. typically sees “one to several” heat events each summer, we could be in for more, Erven says, but it’s impossible to predict their severity or duration much in advance.
At least we know the weather office will take the warning signs seriously, no matter how unlikely they seem.
A personal aside: I was up in Kamloops last week, where the balmy 47.3 C Tuesday temperature gave way to a Canada Day lightning storm that ignited a big wildfire in the hills and gullies separating two built-up neighbourhoods. With a hot wind driving the flames and the night sky glowing orange, hundreds chose to evacuate (including a balding Victorian who, while in no real danger, might have been seen elbowing children out of the way to get to the front of the line). Somehow, firefighters controlled the flames before a single house burned. Having had just a taste of that debilitating heat, I don’t know how they did it. Hats off.
