Severe impacts of flooding created by perfect storm of circumstances in southern B.C.
CBC
The atmospheric river that passed through B.C., last week, which caused severe flooding that destroyed homes and highways, was only one factor that led to such significant damage throughout the province.
A perfect storm of circumstances led to the devastation, and according to climate scientists, it's a combination we are likely to see more frequently, and more severely, in the future.
"The return period on this past event was over 100 years for many of these locations," said Armel Castellan, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada.
"It's more than generational. It's like a lifetime event and then some, and I think that puts the perspective on what we are going to be facing going forward in the coming years and decades."
A study from Environment and Climate Change Canada published in 2020 found that climate change has made rainfall more extreme, and storms with extreme rainfall more frequent.
Castellan says that on average, B.C. can have up to 30 atmospheric rivers in a year, though smaller ones are actually beneficial to the ecosystem.
But when they're more intense, releasing more water and over longer periods of time, those systems become dangerous.
Add in the drought B.C., saw over the summer, wildfire activity shifting the soil this year and other recent years, and a thin snowpack melting on mountains, and you've got the right scenario for major flooding and landslides.
Other extreme weather has hit the province this year, including a heat dome that killed hundreds of people and led to an intense wildfire season, and a tornado that swirled near the University of British Columbia earlier this month.
"There were things conspiring against this event to create such a bad set of impacts that are continuing today," Castellan said.
On average, Vancouver sees about 185 millimetres of rain in November. Many parts of the region exceeded that amount in less than 48 hours last week, and more rain is in the forecast.
Two years ago, climate change researcher Charles Curry co-wrote a paper suggesting extreme rainfall events would lead to peak annual floods of historic proportions by the end of 2100 in the Fraser River Basin.
"What the models tell us is sort of an overview or a kind of a probability of these events getting more frequent in the future," Curry said.
"But we just can't say so much about the exact timing of when they're going to occur."
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.