It’s going to be hot — you’ve been warned
Hottest day ever in Vancouver
If heat records are going to be blasted in the Okanagan, Thursday’s the day.
But the August long-weekend won’t be one for the weather books, as temperatures are forecast to drop a few degrees.
“Things will change a bit for the weekend, but conditions will still be above normal, with highs around 30 C, instead of 35 C,” Environment Canada meteorologist Carmen
Hartt said Tuesday.
The hottest day this week should be Thursday, with a forecast high of 36 C in Kelowna and Penticton.
That would be good enough to almost tie the record for July 30 in Penticton, of 36.7 C, set in 1930. But Kelowna’s hottest-ever July 30 was in 2003, when the mercury reached 39.4.
“It’s hard to beat temperature records in Kelowna, because our measurements go back to 1899,” Hartt said. The hottest day in Kelowna history was Aug. 4, 1998, when the temperature reached 41 C. Through the long weekend, temperatures should average about 30 C with mostly sunny skies. There's said to be little chance of rain, though some scattered showers are possible.
Daytime highs should reach the high 20s and low 30s right through to Aug. 11, according to the longer-range forecast supplied by The Weather Network.
In 1588, the Spanish Armada was defeated in the English Channel by the British, led by Sir Francis Drake. Although Spain sent other fleets against England in the 1590s, none repeated the threat of the 1588 plan to invade England.
In 1858, the government of John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier resigned when the House of Commons voted against their motion to move the capital of the Province of Canada to Ottawa from York.
In 1873, the first Icelanders to migrate to Canada arrived. Their homes had been destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Numbering 285, they arrived in Quebec and headed for the Muskoka area of Ontario. They found it difficult to settle there, however, and moved on to Willow Point on Lake Winnipeg. They named it Gimli — Icelandic for paradise.
In 1890, artist Vincent van Gogh died in Auvers, France, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In 1907, Sir Robert Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scout movement.
In 1914, the first transcontinental telephone line on the North American continent — between New York and San Francisco — was successfully tested.
In 1938, ABC anchor Peter Jennings was born in Toronto. He was the sole anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight” from 1983 until 2005. He died on Aug. 7, 2005 from complications of lung cancer.
In 1940, the German Luftwaffe began its allout blitz against Britain during the Second World War.
In 1958, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill creating the American space agency, NASA.
In 1981, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. An estimated 750 million people worldwide watched the televised ceremony. The couple divorced in 1996, one year before Diana died in a Paris car crash.
In 1984, Ottawa chef-caterer Linda Thom won Canada’s first Summer Olympics gold medal in 16 years. Thom claimed the women’s sport pistol title on the first day of competition in Los Angeles.
In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court acquitted retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk of being Nazi death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible” and quashed his death sentence. Ivan was the sadistic gas-chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in German-occupied Poland during 1942-43. (He returned to Ohio but U.S. immigration officials later ordered his deportation to Germany to face similar charges. In May 2011, he was again convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, but was released pending appeal but died on March 17, 2012.)
In 1998, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the federal government underpaid 200,000 employees in six wage categories dominated by women, and ordered Ottawa to pay nearly $3 billion in compensation.
In 2003, the Canadian Football League terminated Sherwood Schwarz’s ownership of the Toronto Argonauts and seized control of the club.
In 2008, the U.S. House issued an unprecedented apology to African Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and segregation laws.
In 2009, the hottest day ever was recorded in Vancouver, as the temperature reached a high of 33.8 C, breaking the previous record of 33.3 C set in 1960.
In 2009, Microsoft reached a 10-year deal with Yahoo for an Internet search partnership, ending years of back and forth negotiations. The agreement gave Microsoft access to the Internet’s second-largest search engine audience.
In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada denied an attempt by Big Tobacco companies to get the federal government named as a third-party defendant in a B.C. lawsuit seeking the recovery of health care costs linked to smoking-related diseases. Governments in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador had all filed similar suits.