Environment Canada has released a list of its top weather stories of 2014, and like Canada’s ever-fluctuating climate, it’s hot, cold, wet and wild.
Here’s the list of the top 10 events that got Canadians saying, “How about that weather, eh?”
1. Canada’s long, cold winter
Last winter was the country’s coldest in 18 years, according to Environment Canada, with the corridor between Windsor and Quebec City experiencing the eighth-coldest December-to-January stretch ever recorded.
According to data from NASA’s Curiosity Rover, residents between Saskatchewan and Quebec woke up to temperatures colder than those on Mars some mornings, just to put the bone-chilling winter into perspective.
2. Summer flooding in the Eastern Prairies
The Prairie Provinces were hit with flooding in 2005, 2011 and 2013, and unfortunately for Saskatchewan and Manitoba, another billion-dollar disaster hit just before the summer of 2014.
Summer flooding caused the closure of hundreds of highways, displaced hundreds of people and prompted military reservists to fill hundreds of thousands of sandbags to fend of the creeping waters.
When all was said and done, many cities had endured the rainiest times of their existence.
Saskatoon experienced its third-wettest spring on record, dating back to 1892, and June was also the wettest month ever for Brandon, Man., with the city logging 252 millimetres of precipitation – three times the average for the month, and 34 millimetres more than the next-soggiest month recorded.
3. Wildfires in the West and Northwest
In hot contrast to the submerged plains of the Prairies, at times the Northwest Territories and British Columbia experienced dangerous warmth and dryness.
According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, 4.6 million hectares of land burned in 2014 – more than three times the 20-year average.
The Northwest Territories had its worst fire season in 20 years, accounting for the equivalent of six Prince Edward Islands of destroyed land.
B.C. notched its third-largest loss of timber since statistics were recorded more than 60 years ago, forcing the province to quadruple its annual firefighting budget to $266 million.
4. “The Nightmare Before, During and After Christmas”
Christmas 2013 brought with it a clear-coat of ice that encased trees, roads and sidewalks in Eastern Canada.
The freeze persisted into 2014, leaving over 500,000 people without power, knocking hydro lines and tree branches to the ground under the weight of the ice.
5. Summer – Hot on the Coasts, Cool in the Centre
According to the numbers, this past summer was a warm one, with the overall average temperature hopping up one degree above the usual. The Pacific coast had its third-warmest summer in 67 years, and July in St. John’s, Nfld., was its hottest month in 140 years.
But the bright sun on the coasts didn’t quite make it into Canada’s interior, leaving much of Ontario and Quebec disappointed.
Toronto went eight weeks without recording a day above 30 degrees Celsius, and July and August in Southern Ontario was the second-coldest two-month summer combo in 55 years, runner-up only to 1992’s “year without summer.”
6. Hurricane Arthur and others
Though it was a relatively quiet hurricane season, Atlantic Canada was hit with two major storms in 2014. In July, Hurricane Arthur marked an early beginning to the season, while Gonzalo ended it off in October.
7. Airdrie to Calgary Hailer
Aug. 8 was the day of hail for Calgary. Strong winds briefly created something called a “gustnado” outside of the area and riddled the city with baseball-sized hail.
Airdrie, 40 kilometres north of Calgary, saw six people hospitalized from the fist-sized hailstones, and many more households reporting punched rain troughs, dented vehicles and smashed windows.
8. Powerful December Storms on West and East Coasts
In the last month of the year, Vancouver Island and the rest of B.C. were splashed with strong winds and heavy rain three times in a row from three different storms.
The East Coast endured just one December storm, but the nor’easter dunked the Maritime provinces with up to 150 millimetres of rain, including 142 millimetres in 24 hours for Moncton, N.B.
9. Angus Tornado
Angus, Ont., suffered Canada’s most devastating tornado of 2014. Winds up to 220 kilometres per hour tore through the town, damaging more than 100 homes and leaving 300 people homeless.
10. “Snowtember” in Calgary
After being pelted with hail in August, Calgary received an early Christmas present in September: a healthy layer of snow. Though the white stuff isn’t uncommon at that time of year, what was jarring for the city was the balmy, 25-degree weather it was enjoying the day before the three-day storm took hold.
