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JANUARY 16, 2017 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA
It never rains, but it pours
Water levels don’t fully float their boats
The ‘Pineapple Express’ — moisture streaming from Hawaii — returned to California earlier this month, producing the heaviest rains in several years. The downpour triggered flooding in some areas and evacuations in the state and neighbouring Nevada. In an encouraging sign, the U.S. Forest Service said the rain had restored moisture levels in southern California vegetation to a seasonal normal for the first time in five years. Although there is more water in reservoirs and snow in the Sierra mountains than there has been in several years, officials say the drought conditions plaguing the state are far from over. — Reuters
Low water levels after recent dry weather prevented cargo vessels from sailing fully loaded on the Rhine and Danube rivers in Germany this month. Both rivers were too shallow for normal sailings, with some barges in central Germany only able to sail 30 per cent full. Loads were being divided among several vessels instead of being carried by a single craft, increasing transport costs. The Rhine is an important shipping route for commodities including grains, minerals, coal and oil products such as heating oil. The Danube is a major route for east European grain exports, especially maize, to western Europe. — Reuters
When it came to severe weather, Alberta (thankfully) was No. 2 We still had nearly twice as many ‘hail events’ as usual, but Manitoba was worse off for once
T
BY DANIEL BEZTE
he new year comes with the usual list of Top 10 things about the previous year, and in the category of weather, this really appears to be the case. There are the Top 10 Prairie weather stories, Top 10 Canadian weather stories, and the Top 10 world weather stories (which often tend to be skewed toward American weather stories). While I will do an article or two about the different top weather stories from across our region and the world, for this week’s article I thought I would take a look at a summary bulletin that was issued by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The bulletin was issued in late December and was a summary of severe summer weather across the Prairies. (I have to thank the website ‘A Weather Moment’ — aweathermoment.com — for capturing this bulletin as it didn’t stick around on Environment Canada’s website for very long.) This bulletin is a summary of severe summer weather that is, for the most part, related to thunderstorms. It looks at the occurrence of severe hail, wind, rain, and tornadoes and compares what happened in 2016 to the 30-year average. The period of time covered by this summary is April to September, and the period of average is from 1980-2009. The definition of severe weather as defined by Environment Canada is as follows: ‘A severe thunderstorm event is the occurrence of one or more of: large hail (two centimetres or larger in diameter), heavy rain (50 millimetres or more within one hour), strong winds (gusts of 90 km/h or greater, which could cause structural wind damage), or a tornado.’ It was a very active year for severe summer weather across the Prairies in 2016, with a total of 595 severe weather reports. This is about a 139 per cent increase over the
30-year average of 249 reports. Manitoba was the most active region followed by Alberta and then Saskatchewan. Looking at the bar graphs (below) that break out the type of severe weather by province you can quickly see that severe hail events were by far the most numerous, with 368 total events. This compares to the average of 129 events over the 30-year period. Of particular interest is the fact that Manitoba beat out Alberta. Typically, Alberta sees the greatest number of severe hail events, with an average of 50 events, whereas Manitoba’s average is 33. This is due in part to the high elevation in Alberta that results in shorter distances for the hailstones to fall. This gives the hailstones less time to melt on the way down as compared to Manitoba. Looking at the next category, severe wind events, Manitoba once again came out on top with 55 events. In fact, Manitoba came out on top for all of the severe weather categories, with Alberta coming in second in three of the categories and tying for second in one. Overall, Manitoba was the only province that saw above-average numbers of severe weather events across all four categories. Alberta saw above-average amounts of all events except for tornadoes, while Saskatchewan saw above-average amounts of severe hail and rain events, but was slightly below average in the wind and tornado categories. I’ve included several tables to help highlight these numbers. Once again, I would like to thank A Weather Moment for capturing this data. In the next issue we’ll begin our look at the top weather events of 2016. Daniel Bezte is a teacher by profession with a BA (Hon.) in geography, specializing in climatology, from the U of W. He operates a computerized weather station near Birds Hill Park. Contact him with your questions and comments at daniel@bezte.ca.
2016 severe weather season summary
This graphic shows the total number of severe summer weather events that took place across the Prairie provinces in 2016. A quick look at the graph shows that hail was the main severe weather event last summer. Manitoba led the way with 147 hail events and Alberta came in a close second with 144 events.
Severe weather events on the Prairies, 2016 Event type
2016
30-year average
Change (%)
Hail
147
33
+345
Wind
55
14
+293
Rain
20
8
+150
Tornadoes
18
10
+80
Hail
77
46
+67
Wind
19
21
-10
Rain
9
7
+29
Tornadoes
14
18
-22
Hail
144
50
+188
Wind
34
18
+89
Rain
11
9
+22
Tornadoes
14
15
-7
MANITOBA
SASKATCHEWAN
ALBERTA
Photo: Thinkstock