2018’s extreme weather takes toll on the province
2018’s extreme weather affected our health, economy and lifestyle
REGINA From record-breaking highs in summer to a Mars-like cold snap in winter — and with a nod to smoke, tornadoes and power-killing rime frost — Saskatchewan features prominently in Environment Canada’s top 10 weather stories of 2018.
“It was a year where clearly weather was talked about because it had an impact on the economy, and on people’s health, and from a curiosity point of view,” Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said this week in an interview.
With a year of smoky skies, weather extremes and drought, Saskatchewan factored into the top three weather stories of 2018.
Phillips said the rime frost that clung to power lines and sparked on Dec. 4 the province’s worst mass power outage in nearly 40 years also deserves an honourable mention.
“It’s rare in a way because so many of the atmospheric components have to come together to produce that laboratory where you would get that kind of rime ice. And of course the impact that it had was quite something,” said Phillips.
More common in mountainous areas, rime frost occurs when fog or mist freezes on a surface.
“We can go years without it being an issue on the Prairies,” he said, noting it simply takes sunlight and wind — usually in abundance on the Prairies — to eliminate the feathery frost. But the province was cloaked for days in mist and fog.
The year was one of weather extremes, and that was particularly evident on the Prairies. Phillips used the term “winter whiplash” in describing the weather fluctuations.
“Rarely do you go from slush to sweat. And yet this year spring was like measured in days. And on the Prairies, fall was measured in minutes,” said Phillips.
Across the planet, it was the third-warmest summer on record, spanning 138 years. Saskatchewan joined the heat wave the second week of August. Regina set a record for that month with a high of 41.3 on Aug. 11, with records dating back to 1883, as did Moose Jaw the same day, sweltering at 42.3 — a mere two degrees off Canada’s warmest high ever recorded. Other Saskatchewan communities also saw records fall. Regina alone endured 23 hot days — above 30 degrees — when normally there would be 16.
The heat hit when the West was already suffering under wildfire smoke from British Columbia and the U.S. In a province that calls itself the Land of Living Skies,“how do you know? You couldn’t see the skies,” quipped Phillips.
Regina had almost five times the normal number of hours of haze and smoke in summer, while Saskatoon was even worse at 10 times the norm. Spring ’s late arrival kept many farmers off their fields until mid-may — then large swaths of the southern and central Prairies received less than 60 per cent of the average rainfall between April and August, leaving crops withering in the dry heat. In some places, rainfall totals were the lowest in at least 40 years. In Regina, backto-back drought years in 2017 and 2018 were the driest on record spanning 135 years.
“What it really meant for me is almost as if it was like a precursor or rehearsal of what might be a boring year 50 years from now,” said Phillips.
Come the second week of September, cold air moved in and didn’t budge until mid-october. “September frost is normal, but six weeks of cold and snow is unprecedented,” notes the report.
When we weren’t baking, we were bundling up. The winter of 2017-18 began in November, hit hard with a polar vortex in December, and seemed to never end.
Phillips noted last winter saw 60 days of minus-20 temperatures in Regina, while the norm is 43 such days.
In his regional highlights, Phillips noted heavy snowstorms in early March delivered more snow in three days than seen all winter and was dubbed a “million-dollar blizzard” for bringing needed moisture for fields ahead of spring seeding.
Those highlights also mention damaging winds on July 6-7 around Prince Albert and Great Blue Heron Park; 12 tornadoes that hit over two days across southern Saskatchewan during storms July 9-10; and hail that packed a $3-million punch in damages during July 13-14 thunderstorms.