Shocking heat and drought continues
Update 2PM – Multiple small fires
In the past hour the Port Alberni Fire Department and BC Wildfire has been on the scene of two small fires. One at McCoy Lake is causing poor air quality. Please folks, be extremely careful out there. Smoking, hot exhaust and other heat sources will cause a fire.
(click the picture to see an updated view of current Air Quality)
The fire is along the logging road that runs between McCoy Lake Road and Faber Road near Sproat Lake. It is currently 0.6 hectares / 1.5 acres.
No rain soon – history being made.
The forecast remains bone dry for the next week.
There is hope after Day 7, however, we have been seeing a consistent pattern of the models predicting rain at around 7-10 days out, and it never coming. This is again likely a function of the models relying more on historical data the further out they get, and since we are in a historic drought, those long range forecasts are not validating.
If you have trees, they are likely looking very stressed like these ones near my office at VIU. There isn’t much we can do for them except pray for the rains to finally come.
More record Heat
Below are the high temperatures for the beginning of two months. One is October, one is July.
You’d be forgiven if you could not decide which one is which. The only hint is the cooler mean temperatures on the right. That’s October.
The high temperatures are truly incredible over the first 13 days.
Average High in July: 23.3º C
Average High in October: 26.7º C
Obviously this is the reason for all of the records being broken. It has been a truly scorching start to October. A normal October average high (for the entire month) would be around 16ºC.
This weekend we expect temperatures to again reach into the mid-to-high twenties!
Not too much though
What we don’t want though, is a torrential downpour. With the ground so parched if we get a huge amount of rain all at once it’ll just run off into the streams, cause flooding, and won’t help recharge the ground water.
A few days, or a couple weeks, of cool, drizzly, weather would be really really beneficial and would really allow the ground to soak it in and the trees to drink it up.
We are going to just have to hope that next weekend will start that trend.
Have a great weekend and don’t forget to vote on Saturday!
About The Author
In Arizona…they flood water…deep water….but water less. The watering is ground level…not sprinklers. I have been doing this with my lovely arborvitae in the front yard. It is getting very brown though. Jon Tranfield…the landscaper/garden works person I use was by a week ago. Says the arborvitae is still healthy. It is scary…our weather is what I was used to around Mesa.
It is scary. We are seeing our climate change around us in real time.
Thanks Chris! Such a weird year.