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The 2024 wildfire season roared to life across Western Canada this weekend as crews battled multiple out-of-control blazes

Multiple fires broke out across Western Canada this weekend amid a persistent and severe drought affecting British Columbia and Alberta.

B.C. fire crews are working to extinguish several out-of-control fires in the Cariboo Fire Centre, while officials issued an evacuation alert for some neighbourhoods in northern Alberta amid a new out-of-control blaze that sparked near Fort McMurray on Sunday.

CANADA’S WILDFIRES: Visit The Weather Network’s wildfire hub to keep up with the latest on the active start to wildfire season across Canada.

Several B.C. fires burning out of control

The B.C. Wildfire Service reported an out-of-control wildfire on Saturday about 45 km south of Quesnel.

BC Wildfires April 20 2024 The fire quickly spread from 50 hectares on Saturday to more than 1,600 hectares by Sunday evening. Officials suspect the blaze, named the Burgess Creek Fire, was sparked by human activities.

Provincial fire officials reported more than 120 active wildfires across B.C. by Sunday evening, the vast majority of which are considered ‘holdover’ fires still smouldering from the previous season.

Seven of the ongoing fires are considered out of control, while three more are being held by crews.

Evacuation alert issued for community in Alberta

Crews in neighbouring Alberta responded to a wildfire spreading near Fort McMurray late Sunday afternoon. The out-of-control blaze southeast of the city is one of more than a dozen active wildfires in the province that crews are working to extinguish.

Alberta Wildfires April 21 2024

Local officials issued an evacuation alert for the Saprae Creek Estates “due to the potential of the nearby wildfire spreading towards the community,” the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo posted on its website Sunday.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Late summer heat wave causing problems for Canadians

September 22, 2017

Late summer heat wave causing problems for Canadians

Heat flows into eastern Canada

Thursday, September 21, 2017, 7:57 PM – While fall starts on Friday, the eastern half of the country has been greeted with summer-like heat, and it’s causing problems for Canadians.

The toasty weekend forecast was enough for organizers of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Oasis Montreal Marathon to cancel Sunday’s full marathon. The announcement was made on Wednesday after officials realized Sunday’s daytime high was not going to drop.

The seasonal average this time of year for Montreal typically sits around the 17 ^oC mark, but Sunday will feel closer to 37 with the humidity, all courtesy of a dominate ridge of high pressure.

“There’s real danger for participants, especially on the marathon side, after five, six hours of running,” Louis Malafarina, executive director of the race told CBC.

Approximately 5,000 people were signed up for the event, and it’s the first time in 27 years that organizers were forced to cancel, the news agency reports.

When the humidex reads over 28, the risk of heat-related illness rises significantly, Dr. François de Champlain, trauma team leader at the Montreal General Hospital told CBC.

According to de Champlain, over 1,000 runners visited the medical tent at the finish line in 2014 due to extreme heat.

Doctor forces himself to sit in a hot car for science, watch what happened

Participants signed up for the full marathon can still run the half on Sunday. In order to skip the peak of the heat, half-marathon runners are scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. Runners will be given three hours to complete the race, CBC reports.

Meanwhile, some tenants living in apartment buildings in Toronto say despite the unseasonably warm weather, landlords are turning on the heat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Long-term oil spill causes fishery collapse in Newfoundland

August 16, 2016

Long-term oil spill causes fishery collapse in Newfoundland

File photo courtesy: Pixabay

The continuous spill, which sometimes seeps in drops and other times in large amounts, has left residents concerned.

Bob Diamond of the Port au Port Bay Fishery Committee told CP the leak is man-made, and the full extent of the damage is unknown at this point.

The leak is coming from a well at one of at least a dozen abandoned exploration sites in the area that date back as far as the 1800s. There have been previous attempts to cap well pipes in places known for fishing and tourism, with the province spending $263,000 on temporary control measures in 2015, but that hasn’t stopped the oil from continuing to seep.

In May, the fishery noticed a pipe that had been capped in November had been severed, likely due to ice movement and winter weather conditions.

The exact cause of the fishery collapse has yet to be determined, but Diamond told CP it could be linked back to a number of things, “from oil polluting the environment to climate change to acidification of the waters.”

Newfoundland’s Environment Minister Perry Trimper is seeking legal advice on how to proceed. His office confirmed the presence of oil at Shoal Point.

The fishery committee is appealing to Ottawa and the province to provide more regulatory oversight and tighter restrictions on future oil and gas exploration projects.

They’re also asking for more research into what caused scallop stocks to plummet and if the pollution poses a risk to other marine life.

Source: The Canadian Press

What is the Polar Vortex? How does it work?

March 28, 2016

What is the Polar Vortex? How does it work?

Monday, March 28, 2016, 1:48 PM – It is safe to say 2014 was the year ‘polar vortex’ muscled its way into the public lexicon for talking about the weather, and for good reason.

The winter of 2013/2014 was bitterly cold across much of North America. In fact, according to Environment Canada it was the coldest Canadian winter in 18 years, and third coldest in 35 years. Nationally, the five months from November to March were Canada’s coldest since record-keeping began in 1948.

Needless to say, cold records were handily broken in many communities, and many cities issued vastly more cold weather alerts than in the previous winters.

Economically the cold, along with strong snowfalls and an ice storm, played havoc with power grids and infrastructure, and plants’ “winterkill” rates were higher than normal.

So was the polar vortex responsible? Oh yes. But the phenomenon wasn’t new by any means.

What is the Polar Vortex?

Simply, the Polar Vortex is a large area of cold air and low pressure that sprawls across Earth’s poles. The scary-sounding “vortex” monicker comes from the fact that it’s cyclonic: It rotates (counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere) in a flow of air that keeps cooler air near the poles.

Image: NOAA

It’s also fairly high up in the lower/middle stratosphere, but its effects stretch down into the upper part of the troposphere, the first layer of Earth’s atmosphere where our planet’s weather takes place.

The polar vortex is really dependent on large-scale temperature variations in Earth’s atmosphere between the poles and the equator as the year progresses. As such, the polar vortex is confined to polar latitudes in summertime, but “dips” in the winter as the northern hemisphere’s average temperatures drop, bringing colder air southward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scientific concern begins over lack of Great Lakes’ ice

February 4, 2016

Scientific concern begins over lack of Great Lakes’ ice

Thursday, February 4, 2016, 2:56 PM – Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is near record-low levels for this time of year, and scientists are concerned about the effect this will have on wildlife species in the months to come.

Southern Ontario set some record high temperatures on Wednesday, February 3, 2016. For example, the afternoon high of 16oC at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport managed to beat out all other records for the day in the city going back to 1842. It was also the highest daily temperature ever recorded for Toronto in the month of February going back 174 years.

While typical February chills were interrupted by this unusually balmy day, the Great Lakes were still feeling the effects of an already unusually warm winter, with some of the lowest ice coverage numbers on record.

Back on January 11, coverage was logged at just 3.8 per cent – remarkably low, given what the previous two years were like by that time of the year, and largely a consequence of a warm December thanks to the strong El Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

Since then, although there were a few days in the latter half of January where coverage actually got up into the double-digits, as of February 3, only 5.7 per cent of the lakes were covered with ice.

Credit: NOAA GLERL

By comparison, in 2015, ice coverage was at 50.5 per cent, while in 2014 – the year with the second highest coverage on record since 1973 – it was 71.6 per cent.

The unusually large expanse of open lake water so far this winter has been providing fuel for some pretty intense snow squalls. Looking at the current forecast for the rest of February, with a cold snap is expected going into Week 2, and then a return to mild weather later in the month, it’s likely that will continue, even with a slight rebound in ice coverage that should come during that cold snap.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The world could completely abandon fossil fuels by 2050

September 26, 2015

The world could completely abandon fossil fuels by 2050

Climate summit commitments judged insufficient to avoid warming, divestment from fossil fuel investment soars into the trillions, and the world could be running on 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050.

Warming unavoidable?

Just over two months from now, representatives from nations around the world will be gathering in Paris to discuss a new plan for addressing the threat of climate change.

However, according to a Reuters report, U.N. Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said that the current pledges – the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) from a total of 62 nations – only cover 70 per cent of global emissions. Furthermore, a report in The Guardian said that information from UK government sources revealed that the remaining INDCs that are expected to come in before the summit would only bring that figure up to 85 per cent.

Based on those numbers, covering only 70 per cent of emissions would apparently only limit us to 3.0 degrees C of warming, while reaching 85 per cent of emissions would mean a 2.5 degree C rise. With the intended target being 2.0 degrees C of warming – meant to avoid the worst consequences of climate change – the pledges, as they stand now and those expected, are not sufficient.

“What the INDCs will do is mark a very substantial departure from business as usual,” Figueres said, according to The Guardian. However, she went further to say: “Is 3^oC acceptable? No.”

The world is already committed to a certain level of warming based on the emissions that have already been released into the atmosphere.

As of 2015, global temperatures have risen by 0.85^oC since the start of the Industrial Revolution. If we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the contribution already added to the atmosphere, along with any secondary effects (such as climate feedbacks), would likely mean another 0.6^oC of warming by the end of this century.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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Several B.C. fires burning out of control

Warming unavoidable?

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