With the official start of summer, in just a few days, Environment Canada predicts that we will have “beer drinking time” with warmer summers than usual, but storms may occur.
“Our models show that for most of the country, we will be able to label it ‘warmer than normal’ from almost to the coast,” Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, told CTV News Channel on Sunday.
“Certainly for most of Canada, from now on it will be more of a time to drink beer, a time at the beach, and I think Canadians value a summer like this.”
We are already seeing some of this warmer weather across Canada. There are currently warnings of heat in southern Manitoba and parts of northern Ontario near the Manitoba border.
The Manitoba Marathon was scheduled to take place this Sunday, but shortly after the race began, temperatures rose above 30 degrees and organizers announced it would be suspended due to safety concerns.
Manitoba “wants to dry up,” Phillips said, as the province struggles with recent floods, “and is starting to do so.” But the heat jump in this region is currently dramatic.
“Winnipeg can see 37 degrees today, which is 13 degrees warmer than normal, and I think it’s warmer than anything last year,” Phillips said.
Throughout the spring, Canada has seen a wide range of weather.
“Last week we saw a 30 cm snowfall in the Rockies, we actually saw threatening rain in parts of southern Alberta. […] this was something like good news for farmers and producers. And certainly here in the east, about a month ago, we had this windy storm […] “It was one of the most expensive storms in Canadian history, and then last week we had thunderstorms and almost gaps, and Montreal got a lot of rain and stagnant water,” Phillips said.
“So, we’ve had our share of weird, wild and extreme weather, but I think overall this spring was a little cooler and wetter for most parts of Canada.
He added that if you look globally, Canada was “one of the coolest parts of the world” in the first half of 2022.
This prepares us for a warmer summer.
But one of the big deviations for this hot summer is British Columbia, he said.
“The models have improved somewhat to provide more summer than they looked just a week ago,” he said. “But [it looks] as if it would be somehow seasonal, the golden-haired weather: neither too hot nor too cold.
Last year, British Columbia had one of the worst seasons of wildfires the province has ever seen. So far, there have been 277 fires in the province in 2021, compared to 152 forest fires to date in 2022. More than 8,700 square kilometers of land were burned in British Columbia in 2021. On top of that, a dangerous “heat dome” at the end in June and early July 2021, it caused four times as many deaths as the region typically sees during that time, with 619 dying from extreme heat. The cooler summer this year will probably be a welcome change.
Phillps added that if things warm up too quickly in British Columbia, we could have the opposite of fires: floods.
“I’m worried that if it warms up too much, too fast, then they will have some real flood situations because they have very high snow cover in the middle and higher altitudes in the mountains and if you go from rain to sweat, well, suddenly this snow will melt and you will have rivers that will fill and streams, and there can certainly be floods, ”he said.
This warmer summer forecast for Canada as a whole, with BC looking cooler than the rest of the country, reflects The Weather Network’s official summer forecast, which came out in late May and predicts warmer weather with a chance of storms.
Phillips noted that whenever there is high heat and accompanying humidity, we have the conditions to develop a storm.
“We certainly don’t have a forecast for the upcoming storm season,” he said. “We just know that when the warm weather comes with high humidity, storms will break out in Canada – so always keep an eye on the sky.”
It seems that while summer will come with some great beach days across the country, it may be wise to have a backup plan in case of rain.
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