Heat wave forecast for many N.W.T. communities

There's a heat wave happening across parts of the N.W.T. 

"You see a lot of people sitting at the beach or being around the water," said Charlene Blake, a Tsiigehtchic resident. With temperatures in her community forecast to reach 30 C in the coming days in her community, Blake said she has an air conditioned home to turn to if she needs relief. 

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has issued heat warnings for Yellowknife and many communities in the South Slave, Sahtu and Beaufort Delta regions — where day time temperatures near 30 C and overnight lows near 20 C are expected in the coming days. 

Steven Berg, a meteorologist with ECCC, said the "unseasonable" hot weather across the Mackenzie Valley in the N.W.T. is caused by a pronounced ridge over much of western Canada that stretches up into the Yukon and the N.W.T. almost as far as the Arctic coast. 

The ridge is part of the polar jet stream, which is responsible for many of Canada's weather patterns. It is a narrow band of fast-moving air in the upper atmosphere that divides warm and cold air — cold air remains to the North and warm air to the South. 

Though it generally travels from west to east, the jet stream can weaken and become kinked and wavy. Those waves can lead to colder- or warmer-than-normal weather, by allowing polar air to spill southward or warm air to push north. 

ECCC says extreme heat poses a greater risk to people who are young, elderly, pregnant, have chronic illnesses and who are working or exercising outdoors. 

Blake said her community has cool spaces where people can go to find relief from the heat. The health centre, the band office and the youth centre all have air conditioning, she said. 

She also said she checked on elders to remind them to drink lots of water. 

"Last year in July, it was really hot for the Canada Day weekend," she said. But for Gabe Hardisty, a 77-year-old elder and former chief in Wrigley — the heat is unlike anything he's experienced before. 

"People did this," he said, drawing a link between the unseasonably warm temperatures and human-caused climate change. He said nothing is going to be the same in the next 50 to 60 years, and he's not sure what to do about it. 

But for Berg, making the connection between weather and climate change is not so simple. 

"This is kind of a single event. These things do happen under kind of, quote, more normal conditions," said Berg. He also noted, however, that average temperatures are going up at a greater rate in the Arctic than in southern Canada. 

"So these types of effects might become more common in the future," he said.