“10 weather events” of 2023 | Forest fires dominate Canadian rankings

Canadians love to talk about the weather back home. And this year, their weather has interested people all over the world.

“A lot of the world was focused on Canada,” said David Phillips, chief climatologist at Environment Canada, which prepares an annual ranking of the top 10 weather events.

This year, of course, it’s the forest fires that come first. The flames ravaged the country from coast to coast, but also sent thick layers of smoke across the United States and even across the Atlantic Ocean to northern Europe.

“The fires in Canada were impacting people around the world – just ask 100 million Americans,” Phillips said. And people there were wondering: “How could this come from Canada? This is where the air is polished, washed and sanitized.” »

But it actually came from Canada. Mr. Phillips lists the records broken this year in the country.

The total area burned – 184,493 square kilometers – doubled the previous record and increased the ten-year average seven-fold. Nearly a quarter of a million Canadians were forced to leave their homes, including the entire city of Yellowknife. Nunavut had its first fire evacuation.

Wildfires broke out in almost every province and territory across the country, often at the same time. More than 10,800 firefighters, nearly half of them from abroad, were battling the fires in May and were still on the scene five months later.

In Quebec, the Society for the Protection of Forests Against Fire estimated that more than 700 fires burned some 51,000 square kilometers of land, more than SOPFEU had ever recorded in a single season. Nearly 27,000 residents of around thirty municipalities had to be evacuated last summer because of flames or smoke.

“Millions and millions of Canadians have smelled the smoke, tasted it and felt the ashes falling,” Mr. Phillips said.

Floods and hot summer

Another event on Mr. Phillips’ list is linked to these big fires: the hottest summer in Canada, coming in third place after forest fires and smoke from the fires.

The climate behaves normally when the high and low temperature records are approximately equal, recalled the climatologist. But this year, we weren’t even close to the count.

“Over the past two months, 650 heat records have been broken. How many cold records? None. It was so one-sided it’s scary. »

Between May and September, all provinces and territories except Atlantic Canada recorded their five warmest months on record. Kamloops, British Columbia, recorded 62 days of temperatures above 30°C; waters off the east coast were up to five degrees above normal.

Halifax could perhaps become Canada’s weather powerhouse in 2023. Not only was Nova Scotia’s capital threatened by a wildfire, but it also had to deal with significant flooding.

“Spare a thought for the people of Nova Scotia,” said Mr. Phillips. A year ago they had the costliest and most dangerous hurricane in Canadian history (Fiona) and they were still cleaning up. » But rainfall in June in this province was more than double normal, and it doubled again in July – most of it falling in two days.

On July 21, up to 250 millimeters of rain fell on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, parts of Halifax, and central and western parts of the province, a summer’s total in one day. The community of Bedford received 173mm in six hours, a new national record.

All of eastern Canada was flooded. Flash floods raged across southern Ontario; In Quebec, Sherbrooke received precipitation three times higher than normal in July.

In May, during spring flooding in Quebec, two firefighters died during a rescue mission in Charlevoix.

And in July, torrential rains caused further flooding in Quebec, a rather exceptional phenomenon in the middle of summer. In Rivière-Éternité, in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, a man and a woman were swept away by water when a road slid.

But also the cold

Heat has made headlines in 2023, but that old Canadian enemy – the cold – is still very much with us. February was marked by a big freeze: Vancouverites huddled in temperatures of -10°C and southeastern Canada shivered in temperatures up to 20 degrees colder than normal.

This followed a cold snap in December that destroyed hundreds of hectares of vineyards in British Columbia.

At the beginning of April, freezing rain deprived a million subscribers of power, sometimes for a few days, in southwestern Quebec and eastern Ontario.

David Phillips shakes his head. “I never thought I would see another year like 2021, with its heat domes and atmospheric rivers. But this year […] it was a terrible year. »

It’s not as if the weather is fundamentally different, recalls the climatologist. No typhoon hit Ottawa, after all: it’s the same old Canadian system, but augmented and amplified.

“The evidence is clearly mounting that it is increasingly certain that human-induced global warming is making extreme weather even more extreme. And it’s one extreme after another. »

As a climate scientist, that’s fascinating, Phillips said. But as a Canadian, it’s worrying. “Modern society can be abrupt by the weather,” he says. What we are seeing now is a preview of what we will see in the future. »