‘Historically unprecedented’
B.C. could set hottest Canadian temperature record
Two small towns in the British Columbia interior, Lillooet and Lytton, are bracing for the hottest weather on record in Canada, with temperatures forecast to reach 47 C today.
That would shatter the previous record of 45 degrees set 84 years ago on July 5, 1937 in Yellow Grass, Sask.
The soaring temperatures have Peter Busse, mayor of Lillooet, a town of about 2,500 people situated on the Fraser River between Kamloops and Whistler, watching the thermometer anxiously, worried about power outages and the health of his community.
“Historically, whenever they've forecast the temperature, even through the winter and the summer, we've always managed by one, two or three degrees to exceed it,” Busse told Postmedia News. “We're going to be very cautious (because) the best or worst, however you want to look at it, is yet to come.”
David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada, said he couldn't stop himself from crunching the data on Sunday because he couldn't quite believe how many records were being shattered. Across the West, coastal and inland cities alike, from Vancouver to Kamloops to Edmonton were seeing searing temperatures, with more than 50 heat records broken, according to Environment Canada.
The extreme heat wave, which oddly for the West, includes hot nights, forced the school district in Mission, B.C., about an hour southeast of Vancouver, to cancel classes on Monday amid a forecast for 44 C weather. The schools in Mission aren't designed for that heat, and even with air-conditioning on, classrooms could still exceed 30 degrees, according to Angus Wilson, local superintendent.
“We've never had this amount of heat, that's for sure,” said Wilson, who was driving his puppy to an air-conditioned playdate on Sunday because it was too hot for anyone to be outside, even dogs.
Henry Aboagye, owner and proprietor of Mukasi coffee in Abbotsford, B.C., is originally from Ghana and said he loves the heat. But he said many people had stayed home from the local farmers markets where he sells his beans, likely because of the heat.
“I've lived in Canada for 11 years, I've never seen anything like this,” said Aboagye.
Phillips described the heatwave as potentially dangerous because it's not yet “the dog days” of summer when our bodies have grown acclimated to the heat. As a result,
high temperatures in June or earlier typically trigger the most health incidents because people just aren't ready.
By Sunday morning, temperatures in Lytton and Lillooet had already reached into the mid-40s. Usually, records are broken by a tenth of a degree, Phillips said. But the meteorological evidence overwhelmingly suggested that by today, the weather in the two towns would “shatter” and then “clobber” the records for Canada.
He said the record indicates that Yellow Grass, and nearby Midale, both recorded 45 C weather (113 F) on July 5, 1937.
“This is historically unprecedented,” Phillips said, about the heat wave. “One thing you don't do in my business is forecast records, I mean, you're going to be wrong all the time and it's not worth it. But we're forecasting records.”
The reason for the heat wave is a high-pressure weather system that has moved up North America and is hovering over B.C., Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, which Phillips likened to being inside a covered arena as temperatures rise: the air is stagnant and hot, pushing down on you.
An unseasonably dry spring has contributed to the soaring temperatures, said Phillips.
“It's like a double whammy,” he said. “The ground is bone dry. If it had been a wet spring, I don't think temperatures would be historic.”
Weather is inherently a product of many factors, and while it's impossible to blame climate change as the main cause it is an aggravating factor whose impact is undeniable, Phillips said.
He likens climate change's impact to the steroids scandal in Major League Baseball a decade ago. Afterwards, everyone asked if as many home run records would have been broken if players had not used performance enhancing substances. Climate change is the “steroids” of weather, he said.
“It would be so much easier if I said to you, ‘oh my god, the world's upside down, we're getting typhoons in Edmonton and sandstorms in Ottawa,'” said Phillips. Instead, he said it's basically “the same old weather that our grandparents saw” but more extreme.