Squamish man knows which way wind blows
Weather has been his passion since he was 12
Everybody talks about the weather. Jason Ross has been doing something about it for more than 30 years — measuring temperatures, gauging rainfall, recording wind speeds and directions.
So when a large wildfire burned outside of Squamish last month, everyone turned to Ross for answers.
They wanted to know about air quality, which way the wind was blowing, the relative humidity, the amount of dew, how long the unusually dry and hot spell of April weather would last.
“I love it (tracking the weather). I’ve lived here in Squamish pretty much my entire life and to me, the weather is something that affects every aspect of our lives,” said Ross, a one-time wildfire fighter himself. “On that day (the fire started), I called the weather office, told them about the conditions I saw.”
Ross’ weather fixation began when he was 12 through a series of serendipitous events: An elementary school teacher brought him to the old Environment Canada weather station at the Squamish Airport, friends of his parents brought back a weather-watcher application form from the Vancouver Boat Show, the weather station was shut down when he was 17 as a countrywide cost-cutting measure, and then the feds came to rely on him.
Now 44, he is a certified meteorological technician, and his Twitter account @ Squamishweather — he was an early pioneer on the social media platform — has a solid following.
His relationship with Environment Canada goes back to the late-1980s. He started out with a little climate station in his parents’ backyard in the Upper Squamish Valley.
“It consisted of what was called a Type-B rain gauge and a Stevenson screen,” he said.
The Stevenson is an instrument shelter, a levered white box that holds a thermometer. They are still used at some weather stations but the equipment has come a long way since then.
His most memorable weather event was The Deluge of 2003, from Oct. 16-20. Houses in the Spiral Mobile Home Park, between the Squamish River and Sea-toSky Highway, had two feet of water indoors, and water five to six feet high lapping at their windows outside.
“This stands out as one of the most incredible weather events,” Ross said. “The Squamish airport received a whopping 454.8 mm (of rain) in five days. The Squamish river was the highest that I’ve ever seen in my years in Squamish Valley. At one point the river was one metre from breaching the dike in Brackendale.
“The Sea to Sky Highway was washed out north of Squamish, and north of Whistler the Rutherford creek overfilled its banks, washing out the highway, sadly taking the lives of four people.”
The Arctic Blast of February 1989 saw the temperature plunged to minus-16.2C in Squamish, minus-20.8C in Whistler.
“It was so cold and so windy that exposed flesh would freeze within minutes,” Ross said.
The coldest temperature recorded in Squamish is -21C on Jan. 23, 1969. The warmest is 38 C on Sept. 3, 1988.
“I remember this one because my parents had a 1988 Crown Victoria fully loaded with air-conditioning. I was very happy to be inside a nice cool car on that very warm sunny day.”