The Climate Disaster In British Columbia/Pacific Northwest Becomes Tragically Apparent

The village of Lytton, British Columbia set all time heat records
for all of Canada three days in a row about a week ago.
The next day, after it reached 121 degrees, the village
was destroyed in a wildfire. Another climate change
disaster. Photo by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press.

Last week, during the unprecedented, crushing heat wave that hit the United States Pacific Northwest and western Canada, the little village of Lytton, British Columbia set a new record high for any date, any where in Canada.  

For three days in a row. Each day was hotter than the prior one. 

Ultimately, the temperature in Lytton peaked at an unimaginable 121 degrees. The next day, a wildfire swept into Lytton, razing the village, and killing two people

As CBS Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli said on CBS This Morning, "That is a direct connection between climate change and catastrophe."

This heat wave, and the subsequent wave of deaths and fires has certainly gotten a share of media attention.  But it's already fading from the headlines. In reality, even though temperatures have cooled slightly, it's all a true, ongoing climate disaster.  

I say this was, and is a climate disaster because there's widespread agreement that a heat wave of this magnitude could not have happened without a boost from climate change. The results are fatal, and the death toll is rising.  

The British Columbia Coroners Service has reported 719 deaths in the week of the heat wave, triple the number you'd normally expect in the province, according to CBC.

On average, British Columbia sees perhaps three heat related deaths per year at most. 

We all regard Canada as a chilly nation, home to ice hockey and bitter Arctic cold fronts they regularly sends across the border into the United States during the winter. 

Canada, though, like much of the rest of the world, will have to get used to danger and deaths from heat waves. Last week wasn't the first time in recent years Canada suffered a heat disaster. In July, 2018, an intense Quebec heat wave killed no fewer than 90 Canadians.

There are heat deaths in the United States each year, but as summers turn even hotter, those fatalities will increase. Especially in parts of the nation that are not used to extreme heat. 

That same July, 2018 heat wave in Quebec also proved fatal to four Vermonters as temperatures here soared in the upper 90s, and the temperature one night in Burlington failed to drop below 80 degrees for the first time on record.   

In Oregon, last week's heat wave killed 94 people, and that toll is expected to rise as more reports come apparent. 

The summer is still young, so more fatal heat waves are a real possibility. If not here or in Canada, but perhaps in some other part of the world. 

People don't just die from the direct effects of heat. 

There were 710,000 lightning strikes in British Columbia and western Alberta between 3 p.m. Wednesday and 6 a.m. Thursday.  On average, you'd expect about 8,300 such strikes in the same period.  

Many of those lightning strikes would never have happened if not for the heat wave. 

The heat parched the landscape, making forest fires easy to start. During the heat wave, some British Columbian forest fires grew so intense they created pyrocumulus clouds. Those are thunderstorms created from the violent updrafts created by the heat of wildfires.

These thunderstorms unleashed barrages of lightning but almost no rain. Some of the lightning strikes sparked many new fires, which in turn can create more pyrocumulus clouds, more lightning and more fires. The cycle feeds upon itself. 

Fires in British Columbia and the western United States will probably burn all summer, and many more large ones are sure to start. 

We're seeing a repeat of the last few seasons, which had huge, deadly wildfires out west, part of the new normal. 

We feel a few effects of all those fires here in the Green Mountain State, even when temperatures stay cool.  We love the deep blue skies of summer, but the smoke high up in the sky turns the sky a bland, hazy blue gray. 

We'll probably see some of that high altitude smoke and haze overhead this week. The smoke is too high up to cause much of a health effect locally, but the haze is disheartening. 

Combine that with the gypsy moth caterpillar infestation in Vermont this year, which have wrecked the normal landscape of deep green forests, and left a patchwork of brown, denuded trees. That adds to the disappointment in this year's Vermont summer environment. The beauty of the Green Mountain State is diminished. 

Climate change might have had a hand in the caterpillar mess. Recent springs have been hot and dry in Vermont possibly because climate change intensifies spring heat waves.  A fungus that thrives in our normally damp springs keeps the caterpillars in check. Hot, dry weather means less fungus, and more caterpillars.

I got carried away here complaining about aesthetic, but not life-threatening effects of climate change here in Vermont and veered off the main topic.

There is a lull in the heat waves going on at the moment. It was actually chilly in New England this past weekend. We'll have ups and downs in temperature from week to week, and from location to location. It's actually been a cool summer so far, relatively speaking, in and around Texas, for instance. 

However, as climate change marches on, the heat waves will keep striking harder and harder. They'll also become more likely in weird places. Plus, there's other weather and climate worries to deal with. 

For instance, the extreme drought in the West sure hasn't gone away, and that will keep intensifying in many areas for the rest of the summer. That's another crisis made worse with climate change.

Not every weather event is "caused" by or made worse by climate change. Plus, there have always been extreme weather that has caused deaths and tragedy. 

These days, though, many of the headline events are influenced by and made more catastrophic with us spewing greenhouse gases into the air. So expect your news to feature more and more fatal extreme weather events for the foreseeable future.