10 weather stories that made 2021 a year like no other

Environment Canada has released its Top 10 weather stories for 2021 — a year that its senior climatologist Dave Phillips calls the "most destructive, the most expensive and the deadliest year for weather in Canadian history."

Though this is the 26th year that Phillips has created the list, he said: "No year compared to this year."

"The events are bigger and badder and more impactful now than they were just 20 years ago," he said.

While scientists have been raising the alarm over climate change for decades, in the past, it has appeared gradual, subtle and distant, Phillips said. "I think this is the year that Canadians saw it firsthand."

The trend over the past 26 years also shows this is a preview of what we need to expect more of and adapt to, he said. "I think that we need to consider this as a dry run, a dress rehearsal, of what we're going to see more of in the future."

British Columbia bore the brunt of the weather events, experiencing both the Top 2 and half of the overall events.

"The province was baked, dried out, scorched, flooded and inundated with mud, rock and debris flows," said a statement accompanying the Top 10 list.

"It truly was an endless parade of misery, hardship and misfortune for them," Phillips added.

But there were some notable events in other provinces, too, from powerful tornadoes to a record-breaking wildfire season. Here's a look back at them, using the nicknames Phillips has given each one.

On June 28, 2021, Lytton, B.C., smashed the Canadian record-high temperature of 45 C for the third time in a week, hitting 49.6 C. The same week, 90 per cent of the village burned to the ground in a wildfire, killing two people. 

WATCH | Lytton, B.C., evacuated as wildfire moves in after heat wave:

While that represented some of the extreme impacts of the "heat dome" that cooked B.C. for 11 days in late June, the event also broke more than 1,000 daily temperature records across the Northwest and killed hundreds of people. 

"Owing to the extraordinary early summer heat and drought, British Columbia suffered the deadliest week of weather in Canadian history," Phillips said in a news statement.

Overall, 595 people died of heat-related causes over the course of the summer in B.C. alone., with 231 of those deaths recorded on June 29.