Heat dome, flooding top weather stories of the year: David Phillips

It was another interesting year for weather in Canada.

While record temperatures and drought-like conditions were among the top news stories from 2021, there was also a massive flood that tore through British Columbia.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips joined the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Thursday to share the top five weather stories of the year.

5. Canada rides out four heat waves

High temperatures were seen throughout much of Canada in 2021 as a number of heat waves set in across the country.

“It was just so hot for so long, (with) a lot of days above 30 C. Regina had twice as many days above 30 as they normally would get,” Phillips said. “The big one was the heat dome (in June) but there was (a heat wave) earlier in Western Canada and then a couple later.”

Those warm temperatures would serve as a catalyst for a number of the stories that occurred in 2021.

4. Wildfire season

“It was early, active, and unrelenting this year,” Phillips said when describing the 2021 wildfire season.

It wasn’t just the number of wildfires that occurred, but the effects they caused across the province.

Calgary takes the top prize for the smokiest city in the country in 2021.

“(It had) 512 hours of smoke and haze and they normally get 12 hours. Even Regina had 147 hours of smoke and haze. You could smell it, you could taste it, you could feel it. It was the third-worst in 70 years of observations,” Phillips said.

3. Canada dried out from coast to coast

Drought conditions were experienced throughout Canada in 2021 and.  Phillips said it was leading the way in terms of weather stories.

“For many months this was going to be the No. 1 story (of the year) – the economic losses in the billions of dollars,” Phillips said.

“It wasn’t just the drought out your window. As a climatologist, I was fascinated by the fact that in places like Regina, the precipitation – if you looked back 80 years from now and go, ‘2021, it wasn’t too bad, there was actually 20 per cent more precipitation than normal.’ ”

But Phillips said that was far from true, with a stretch from late May to mid-August where places didn’t get a drop of rain.

“(The rain) all came at the end of August so it shows you that statistics can lie to you (by) presenting a different picture. This one was really dry (and) just very difficult for farmers. A week before the harvest season began, the drought monitor people declared 99 per cent of the prairies was in a drought situation,” Phillips said.

2. B.C.’s flood of floods

B.C. bore the brunt of Canada’s worst natural disaster on record in 2021, with massive flooding tearing its way through the province in November.

“Here was the most expensive disaster in Canadian history, the most destructive and it was still only No. 2 (on the list),” Phillips said.

He said the province received monsoonal rains in September, October and November.

November is usually the wettest month of the year, but this surpassed even those expectations.

“It had just doubled the amount of rain it normally gets. It was rain and flooding and it was almost an Armageddon-type of situation with infrastructure gutted and entire towns evacuated. Fuel and food were rationed and some of the most fertile lands in Canada were underwater as far as you could see,” Phillips said.

The rain swallowed roads, homes and vehicles. Thousands of people were forced out of their homes.

1. Deadly heat dome

The deadly heat dome that set in across most of Canada was named the top story of the year.

“This was an episode of heat that I have never seen before. Nobody has; it has never occurred before. This was the record heat under the dome. A juggernaut of high-pressure got established over British Columbia and Alberta and spread into Saskatchewan, Manitoba and parts of Ontario,” Phillips said.

Two Saskatchewan towns — Midale and Yellow Grass — used to hold the Canadian records for hottest temperature ever recorded, at 45 C. It was a record that stood for 84 years.

But Lytton, B.C., recorded a temperature of 49.6 C on June 29. The next day, a wildfire destroyed the town.

“These were Death Valley moments for Canada. It captured attention around the world. We broke records for the number of records we broke,” Phillips said.

“We can now say that Canada – the second-coldest country in the world – has now a warmer temperature than any place in the U.S. outside of the desert southwest. Hotter than Las Vegas, hotter than Phoenix, hotter than any temperature that’s ever occurred in Europe or South America.”

The heat dome also killed hundreds of Canadians as people dealt with extreme temperatures.