The North Shore experienced some wacky weather on the weekend as a heat wave was followed by a sudden wind storm.
West Vancouver sweltered under temperatures that soared to 31.3 C Saturday and smashed the weather record for the area.
“What’s noteworthy about this heat event is that it’s early in the season,” says Environment Canada meteorologist Matt MacDonald, adding the end of July and early August is normally when the heat waves hit B.C.
Across the province, 64 temperature records were broken on the weekend, and there’s no sign that relief from the heat is in store any time soon. For Canada Day, temperatures in the Lower Mainland are expected to hit close to 28 C, in a hot, dry pattern that will hold steady right through to the weekend and who knows how much longer.
“As June draws to a close, it’s looking like we are going to have the warmest June on record — a whole month where the temperature was on average two degrees warmer than normal,” said MacDonald. “And that’s on the heels of May where we only received four millimetres of rain — and that was the driest May on record.” The extended forecast is warm and with no indication of rain in the short and medium term.
This week’s weather is akin to tropical climes, complete with high humidity levels that reached 60 per cent on Monday afternoon, whereas the normal range is between 10 and 20 per cent.
Another weather anomaly was the high wind that blew largely across the North Shore Sunday evening.
“We are kind of baffled by it, to be honest,” said MacDonald.
Environment Canada does have a theory about Sunday’s wind activity: heavy downpours in the upper atmosphere lofted over the Lower Mainland, but because it was so dry in a lower layer of air, none of that rain hit the ground. It was like being on the verge of a thunderstorm but without the lightning, said MacDonald.
The highest wind speed on the North Shore Sunday evening was clocked at 87 kilometres an hour at Pam Rocks — a weather observation station in the middle of Howe Sound.
The gusts felled many trees and large branches that came down across power lines, causing close to 5,000 B.C. Hydro customers on the North Shore to lose electricity overnight Sunday.
“So, it could have been as simple as a tree branch making contact with a power line and kicking out the circuit, or more complicated like an entire small tree coming down on power lines and bringing the lines down,” said B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer.
The calls to Hydro started coming in around 10 p.m. and the number of reported outages peaked around midnight, said Heer.
The hardest hit area in North Vancouver was within a couple-block radius of Capilano Mall, where 1,500 homes and businesses were without power.
In West Vancouver, about 300 British Properties residences close to the Capilano Golf and Country Club were in the dark. Most of the power was restored to North Shore homes and businesses before sunrise Monday.
The sustained heatwave, meanwhile, is having an impact on electricity demand as residents crank up the air conditioning. On Saturday evening, Hydro recorded a 15 per cent increase in the peak hourly load across the province over the same period last week, and a 10 per cent increase on Sunday.
Dry conditions continue to beleaguer West Vancouver firefighters who put out four brush fires in four hours on Friday morning alone.
“Granted they were all small, but we suspect they were started by smokers’ material,” said Jeff Bush, assistant fire chief for West Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services.
It appears that people are not getting the message about the current charcoal barbecue ban and the permanent no-smoking bylaw in West Vancouver parks.
“I probably asked about a hundred people at the Kenny Chesney concert to put their cigarettes out,” said Bush of the outdoor event at Ambleside last week.
With the fire danger rating currently “high” and well on the way to “extreme” Bush said it’s likely propane barbecues will be banned in West Vancouver parks by week’s end.
In District of North Vancouver parks, charcoal/briquette barbecues are still allowed, however people are being asked to use extreme caution and to dispose of their charcoal briquettes responsibly in the “charcoal disposal pits” located in Princess, Cates, Deep Cove and Panorama parks.
