HOT, DRY AND DISASTROUS
WESTERN CANADA’S DROUGHT IS TAKING A TOLL Record temperatures and scant rain are wreaking havoc on everything from farms and forests to fisheries and jobs, write Alicja Siekierska, Randy Shore, Will Chabun and Alex MacPherson.
Record-breaking temperatures and extremely low rainfalls across Western Canada are causing chaos for farmers and firefighters as they grapple with the worst drought in more than a decade.
The widespread hot and dry conditions in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have led to a jump in wildfires, tight water restrictions, and pressure on farmers as many crops remain stunted and the cost of hay skyrockets.
And while some rain sprinkled over the largely bone-dry Prairies this week, it may be too little too late for the western provinces to fully recover this summer.
On Thursday, with smoke billowing from a hillside behind him, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to take a hard look at new ways to fight devastating wildfires like the one raging near West Kelowna, B.C.
In Alberta, several counties have declared states of agricultural emergency.
In Saskatchewan, crop insurance rules are being loosened.
In British Columbia, water restrictions have been imposed while “drought shaming” grows on social media.
And it’s prompting many people to ask just what’s going on.
“Is it climate change? I don’t know. It may just be a fluke, it may just be something coincidental, it’s hard to say,” says David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
He says although many people have associated the lack of rain in the region with El Niño — a climate event that happens when warm water in the Pacific Ocean interacts with the atmosphere — it may actually be connected to a mass of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that originated in the Gulf of Alaska and moved down the coast to British Columbia. It’s been dubbed the “Pacific blob.”
“(It) could have contributed to weather blocking, which prevents normal processing of precipitation events, over the western provinces,” Phillips says, adding it also could have brought wetter weather in the east.
“What we’re seeing now is conditions go from one extreme to the other,” Phillips says.” He calls it “weather whiplash.” “That seems to be a common thing that we’re seeing around the world, where normal doesn’t exist anymore.”
The effects of this year’s extremely dry conditions are widespread.
FARMING
About 60 per cent of the agricultural landscape within the prairie region has received very low or record-low precipitation so far, says agro-climate specialist Trevor Hadwen. That has affected about 27,000 farmers and about six million cattle in the very dry regions of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“We had just completed our first hay cut, which was probably a little less than half what we normally get. And the second cut in the pasture was basically dying,” says Orville Schmidt, who farms in Leduc, southeast of Edmonton.
“I hate to admit it, but I’m 60 years old. In those 60 years, I can only remember two or three summers like this.”
Several Alberta counties have declared states of agricultural disasters.
In B.C.’s Fraser Valley farmers are doubly fraught by hot, dry conditions, with crops that are ripening so fast they can’t be harvested and unirrigated fields burned brown by unrelenting sun. Farmers have left tonnes of perfect berries, corn, peas and beans in the field to rot because they are ripening at the same time, according to Tom Baumann, an agriculture professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Chilliwack farmer Ian Sparkes left 240,000 ears of ripe corn in the field after his staggered showings all ripened: “I just can’t sell it all.”
Livestock producers have been hit the hardest. Many farmers facing feeding challenges are being forced to make a difficult decision: Purchase more feed for double normal cost, or get rid of cattle.
The conditions have forced Saskatchewan to OK grazing on wildlife development land. The southwest portion of B.C is experiencing a Level Four drought — the most extreme rating.
WILDFIRES
Forests in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan are burning at rates well above normal, driving thousands of people from their homes, requiring firefighters to be brought in from other provinces, the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand and Australia.
Early in July, Saskatchewan had to call in the army: More than 1,000 military personnel were deployed to fight the wildfires ravaging the province. This week, provincial officials said the amount of land that’s burned in Saskatchewan this year was about 10 times what is normal.
In B.C., the blazes have blown through the province’s $63-million firefighting budget, a figure Premier Christy Clark now admits could hit $400 million. About 240 fires are burning in B.C.
In Alberta, there have been more than 1,400 fires this year — already more than the number for the entire 2014 wildfire season.
WATER FLOWS
With most of the mountain snowpack long ago melted and little rain since May, water flows in rivers in B.C. are trending to record-low flow and higher water temperatures, which leads to high mortality in spawning salmon.
A fishing ban for southern Vancouver Island streams was expanded to most rivers in the region.
“The snow we did have melted off earlier than normal right across the province, upwards of a month ahead of what is normal,” Dave Campbell, spokesman for the Rivers Forecast Centre. “It has also been warmer and drier than normal for almost three months so we are now seeing extreme low flows.”
Some flows are the lowest recorded since measurements began 80 to 100 years ago, says Campbell.
In Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver, the low water levels are being blamed for the loss of at least 130 jobs. This week, the Howe Sound Pulp and Paper Mill announced it would close its paper production operations due to dropping water levels in Lake Seven. The lake feeds the mill’s operations.
RESTRICTIONS
While several communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan have asked their residents to conserve water, the situation is much more dire on the West Coast.
Communities in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island have implemented widespread restrictions on water use to deal with record low reserves. Metro Vancouver has banned outdoor sprinkling, washing cars and filling swimming pools for the first time in more than a decade to preserve rapidly dwindling water supplies in the region’s three reservoirs. The water supply is less than 70 per cent of normal for this time of year, according to Metro chairman Greg Moore.
Fearing even tighter restrictions, the citizenry has flooded municipal snitch lines with thousands of complaints about people wasting water.
People are also taking to social media to post “drought-shaming” pictures of homes with green lawns in the city’s most affluent neighbourhoods.
Some small measure of relief came Friday, as rain fell in Vancouver and on the coast, but it was only expected to be a few millimetres.