It's just smoke, not cloud, over Vancouver. The smoke is from forest fires and there is not a drop of rain in sight.
The weatherman says the outlook is for continuing sunny and warm weather. The temperature today is expected to hit 83 degrees, equaling the year's record high, set July 7, and repeated Sunday. Tuesday's temperature is expected to hit 80 degrees. There may be a few scattered thunderstorms over the northeast mountains tonight.
However the weatherman says there is no chance of any rain from them touching Greater Vancouver. We have now had 18 days without a trace of rain and a month with no appreciable rainfall. Park Board officials estimated 160,000 sweltering people tried to beat the heat at the beaches Sunday in Greater Vancouver. It really didn't do much good though as the water itself reached a lukewarm 67 degrees.
Blazing Forests Shroud City
British Columbia is ablaze today with almost 300 forest fires. Their smoke, spelling out a huge loss of natural resources, hangs heavy over Vancouver. It is already the worst forest fire year on record despite the fact that the most hazardous period, August and early September, is still to come.
The B.C. Forest Service says firefighting costs have new exceeded $1,500,000. Un told millions of dollars worth of timber have been destroyed. More than 1.000 men are fighting the fires in all parts of the province, in the Cariboo, down to the border, and on Vancouver Island. It will continue to be a losing battle unless there is a break in the hot, dry spell and there is no sign of that.
Hardest hit is the Prince George area where an estimated 1,000,000 acres are burning. The timber loss there over the past two months is estimated at least $7,000,000. Two lives were lost there Saturday. John Yadeau, 30, and his son, John, Jr., 9, were killed when their truck overturned. They were rushing supplies to firefighters at Willow River. Two others in the truck were injured.
There are also large fires at Harrison Lake (3,500 acres) and on the international border at Chilliwack Lake 11,000 acres). There are 65 fires burning in scattered parts of the Vancouver forest district which covers southwest B.C. The forest service is using helicopters to fly men into the remote fires and water-toting aircraft to douse spot fires. The copters took four crews into central Vancouver Island Saturday and dropped another two crews today near Squamish.
Vancouver parks superintendent Phil Stroyan today said the fire hazard had extended to the huge Stanley Park in Vancouver. He urged the public to be "extremely careful especially with cigarette butts" when visiting the park. The park's regular employees, 100 during the day, 20 at night, are keeping a special watch and four extra fire guards have been hired, he said.
Glacier wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 2:47 pm
why can't they give more detailed fire causes like this for modern fires!??
I'm sure you've noticed this too but I've frequently found that data collection/detail and publically available data at the federal or provincial level in terms of climate and other related things was better decades ago than it is today. One thing we've definitely talked about many times is the fact that there were more stations across BC and Canada in 1970 compared with today.
I'm sure you've noticed this too but I've frequently found that data collection/detail and publically available data at the federal or provincial level in terms of climate and other related things was better decades ago than it is today. One thing we've definitely talked about many times is the fact that there were more stations across BC and Canada in 1970 compared with today.
But even where more data is collected today it's harder to find (government seems to be more secretive over time). I'm sure they still track the exact causes of fires, but don't feel the need to tell us for some odd reason.
