FLOODING & MICROBURSTS
Wacky weather hit Montreal hard and left damage
Weather was weird across Canada in 2017 and Montrealers had their fair share of it, starting with a weirdly warm winter, a weirdly wet spring, a bummer of a summer and then a bizarrely summery fall.
David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said science can’t definitively pin any particular weird weather event on climate change. But he notes most of what’s been happening has been predicted by scientists.
According to the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization, 2017 was the 39th consecutive year with above-normal temperatures, and the second warmest year since observations began 135 years ago. The past three years globally have been in the top three for high temperature records, but 2017 was the warmest year on record without an El Niño influence.
So here, gleaned from Phillips’s annual list of 100 significant weather stories across Canada, are five of the weirdest weather stories of 2017 for Quebec — and Montreal in particular:
WHERE DID WINTER GO?
The year 2017 came in like a lamb, with Montrealers enjoying the warmest January and February in 70 years. The normal winter months of December, January and February had 44 melting days, compared to the average of 30. On Feb. 25, the thermometer hit 13 C. On only six days of winter 2017 did the temperature dip below -20 C, compared to the normal average of 15 days. A weirdly mild winter indeed.
STRANDED BY A STORM
Winter 2017 wasn’t all balmy and calm, however. A storm named Stella marched across parts of Ontario on March 13 and headed eastward to Quebec the next day, dumping 50 centimetres of snow on the southern parts of the province. Winds of 70 kilometres per hour in Montreal made visibility poor on the roads.
About 200 buses were stuck in the snow at the peak of the storm and Canada Post suspended mail delivery. On a stretch of Highway 13 in Montreal, many drivers and passengers spent the night in an estimated 300 vehicles left stranded on the highway, a debacle that eventually merited an apology from the premier, Transport Quebec and the Sûreté du Québec. A class-action lawsuit was then filed on behalf of those who say they were affected.
RECORD SPRING SHOWERS
Record rainfalls in April and May across southern Quebec swelled rivers and streams and overwhelmed sewers, resulting in record flooding that caused at least two deaths and more than $200 million in property damage. Lake Ontario hit its highest recorded level since 1880, when record-keeping began, and that pushed the St. Lawrence River more than a metre higher than normal by early May.
Waterways overflowed across the province in the worst flooding in 55 years. In Montreal, total rainfall in April was 156.2 millimetres — the second-wettest April in 147 years of record-keeping — and overall spring rainfall in Montreal hit 400 millimetres.
For the first time since the ice storm of 1998, the city of Montreal declared a state of emergency, along with dozens of other municipalities, including Laval and Gatineau. More than 2,000 Canadian Armed Forces personnel helped prepare for the flooding and participated in rescue operations when more than 5,000 homes were flooded and many roads were washed out. Two people lost their lives in the Gaspé region, swept away into the waters of the swollen Ste. Anne River on May 6.
SUMMER ARRIVED LATE
After a warmer-than-usual winter and an exceptionally rainy spring, Montrealers could not be blamed for longing for a hot and sunny summer, like the one they had enjoyed in 2016. It was not to be. The summer of 2017 saw only three days above 30 C, compared to 16 beach-friendly days the summer before. There were 15 days of heavy rain, as opposed to only seven in the summer of 2016. In fact, the longest we went without rain in the summer of 2017 was four consecutive days, as opposed to 11 in 2016. Worst of all, the summer of 2017 saw only two completely dry weekends, as opposed to five in the summer of 2016. Finally, the dog days of summer arrived ... in the last week of September! Montreal had its warmest September and October on record. The average temperature for those months is usually 12 C, but this year it was a record-breaking 15.9 C.
‘MICROBURST’ LESSON
On Aug. 22, southern Quebec was hit with multiple thunderstorms, causing extensive property damage. But in the Notre-Damede-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, a phenomenon called a microburst — a sudden and powerful downdraft — snapped century-old trees and ripped off roofs. Felled power lines caused power outages in about 11,000 homes. About 100 of 400 damaged trees had to be cut down, and the neighbourhood’s largest park, N.D.G. Park, was closed for weeks as workers cleaned up and inspected trees. Miraculously, nobody was seriously injured.