Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Atmospheric rivers may sound like a description in a travel blog, but these phenomena cause serious damage. They occur when water evaporates into the air and is carried along by the wind, forming long currents that flow in the sky like rivers flow on land. They can cause severe rains and mountain snow. Atmospheric rivers are partly to blame for the torrential rains in California last week, and another one is expected to hit on Monday.
Severe thunderstorms and summer go hand-in-hand on the Prairies. And it's not your imagination that such weather events have been getting increasingly catastrophic over the past decade. In the prairies, the last few years have been marked by severe storms. Calgary alone has seen hail, funnel clouds and lightning strikes, with downpours that turned roads into rivers and stranded motorists in their cars.
Weather in Thunder Bay, Ont., will grow warmer, wetter and less predictable over the next 30 years, and that will affect everything from our risk from floods and forest fires to food prices, and mental and physical health, experts say. But, they say, there is much that can be done at a local level to mitigate those effects and prevent further warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report on Feb. 28, cataloguing how humans and the natural world are being affected by the changing climate and how they can adapt.
Weather in Canada is getting warmer, wetter and stormier due to climate change. Extreme weather events that we used to experience twice a century are now expected to happen every six years. Did you know that since the late 1940’s, in Canada: Average temperatures have increased by 1.3 degrees Celsius; Average rainfall has increased by 12 per cent; and We experience an additional 20 days of rain each year?
