EXTREME WEATHER

Last year was Canada’s eighth-warmest in 70 years, with temperatures across the country 1.4 C higher than average. Other parts of the country experienced their worst weather in years, with temperature and precipitation extremes. British Columbia had its wettest spring followed by its driest summer to date, sparking one of the province’s worst recorded wildfire seasons (now surpassed by the 2018 season). Hot temperatures and stormy weather of the kind shown above in Three Hills, Alta., plagued the rest of the West and the East, with Calgary experiencing its hottest May-to-august period since 1881 and parts of Quebec enduring a heat wave that was linked to more than 90 deaths and left Montrealers seeking relief in water fountains. Rain flooded Ontario and Quebec, the latter of which saw the most spring rain in 147 years, and blizzards hit Newfoundland in March, causing more damage than Hurricane Igor (one of the worst weather events in memory in Atlantic Canada) in 2010.