Surprise auroras lit up the night! Now watch for the encore!
Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Tuesday, May 14th 2019, 5:45 pm - The sky unexpectedly erupted in a bright display of the Northern Lights early Tuesday morning. Now get ready for the encore performance!

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/surprise-solar-storm-sparks-auroras-could-continue-through-the-week

‘It’s like nature’s on steroids:’ Well-known Canadian weather expert tackles climate change and eco-anxiety
Climatologist David Phillips recently embarked on a cross-Canada tour to deliver a lecture titled ‘Weather and Climate: Not What Our Grandparents Knew.’
News May 15, 2019 Yvette d’Entremont Star Halifax
B-HAL-GRANDPARENTSWEATHER14

HALIFAX—David Phillips, 74, has witnessed some wild weather during his 51 years in the business.

But recent years have brought greater unpredictability and damage to Canadian communities, and he's urging people to pay attention to our rapidly evolving climate and the dangers it poses.

The senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada recently embarked on a cross-Canada tour to deliver a lecture titled 'Weather and Climate: Not What Our Grandparents Knew.'

"It has been a real change in 50 years. A lot of people think climate is a slow motion kind of change, they'll be dead before it begins to bite deep and hard. They think it's about skinny polar bears and it's like the ice ages and now we're going to warm up," Phillips said in an interview ahead of his May 15 lecture at Dalhousie University's Weldon Law building.

"What I maintain is if you change the climate, you change the weather…The weather is changing. It's not that we're getting new weather, it's not as if we're getting typhoons in Truro and sandstorms in Bridgewater. What we're seeing is the same old weather, but it is more intense, more frequent, out of place, out of season, and it's wilder."

For the past five decades weather facts, news and science have been on Phillips' radar morning, noon and night. One of his favourite pastimes is keeping track of record-breaking weather. In recent years, he said those records are being smashed at an alarming rate.

"It has been an enormous difference from the previous records, like hitting a home run but out of the ballpark every time. It's like nature's on steroids," he said.

"It's almost as if something else is changing our climate other than nature, and I think it's people."

In addition to factors like greenhouse gas emissions, he said our hunger for urbanization has led us to drain wetlands for skyscrapers and to trade green space for pavement, resulting in a rapidly warming climate.

"The evidence is irrefutable. There's human DNA all over it," he said.

But until July of 1996, Phillips said he wasn't a strong believer in climate change.

"I had seen so much weather. I'd seen the variations of the seasons, I'd seen the extremes and I thought, well it's always changing, it's one of the characteristics of our climate. It's not stable and static and homogenous," he said.

All of that changed following Quebec's Saguenay flood. From July 18 to 21, 1996, many of the region's roads, bridges and other delivery systems for power and water disappeared. Library and Archives Canada described it as Canada's first billion-dollar natural disaster and the deadliest flood since Toronto's Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

By July 22, 1996, 488 buildings had been destroyed and flooding had forced almost 12,000 people from their homes. Ten people died in clay slides created by the rushing water.

"It was more water filling the Saguenay that weekend than would flow over Niagara Falls in two months. We'd never seen a situation like that and I began to think wow, that has to be the storm of a millennium," said Phillips.

"Then it was followed by the flooding in the Red River Valley and then the (1998) ice storm from hell and then it really just absolutely came tumbling one after another, and there just didn't seem to be any off season."

With every area of the country impacted by climate change, Phillips said it's easy to sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the issue.

"I almost suffer from eco-anxiety at times. Are we going to do anything about it?," he said, adding that nations sign treaties like the Paris agreement and the Kyoto accord and climate change continues to accelerate.

"We seem to almost feel we can engineer our way out, we can live by the flood plain, we can live by the sea. I mean one third of the people in the world live within 100 kilometres of the ocean. We have graveyards in the waiting, so to speak."

With so many risks posed by climate change, Phillips said it's important not only think differently, but to act differently. Despite the urgency, he stresses his message is not all doom and gloom. His hope lies with today's youth, a group he describes as engaged and determined to facilitate change.

"This is going to be World War Three, the idea that this (climate change) is going to be the common enemy. It'll be known by everybody. We're going to mobilize together. We're going to solve it," Phillips said.

"And I'll be dead by that time, but it gives me hope that people won't let this happen, that there's still time. But we have to move quickly. The faster we move, the less expensive and the easier it will be."

Yvette d'Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on health. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

Yvette d’Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on health. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9355425--it-s-like-nature-s-on-steroids-well-known-canadian-weather-expert-tackles-climate-change-and-eco-anxiety/

OTTAWA Weather: A variable and soggy couple of days, then a much nicer week

Staff Reporter   
Updated: May 19, 2019
Files: Nokia Sunday Bikedays kick off. Every Sunday morning until the Labour Day weekend, outdoor enthusiasts can take advantage of over 50 kilometres of car-free parkways. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia   

Well, at least it won’t be cold out this Victoria Day weekend, but look out the window, and there’s your weather forecast for the next while.

Sunday’s and Monday’s weather is looking slightly less grim on the Environment Canada weather site.

Environment Canada’s weather site for the week of May 19

The prediction for Sunday is, well, a 40 per cent chance showers, with a high of 21 C and a humidex of 26. There’s a very high UV index of 8. Winds will be out of the east at 10 km/hour.

There’s a high chance of showers through late afternoon, then a window of merely cloudy skies, according to Environment Canada.

In the early evening, the showers will be back with risk of a thunderstorm late Sunday evening.

Winds will become southwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 before morning and a low of 15 C.

Monday (stop us if you’ve heard this one before) should be mainly cloudy, with a 60 per cent chance of showers in the afternoon.

Winds will be from the southwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 and a high of 18 C. UV index 6 or high.

If you can hold on for the rest of the week, Tuesday through Saturday are looking great with either sunny or partly cloudy skies.

Saturday’s high is predicted to be 26 C, but of course in this wacky spring, anything can happen.

What’s open and closed on Victoria Day in Ottawa

Parenting best bets: Family-friendly activities in Ottawa this May long weekend

Rideau Canal opens for the season with new canal-side exhibits

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/weather-a-soggy-couple-of-days-then-a-much-nicer-week
Yesterday's hot and cold spots ...
Hot spot in Ontario: 20.6 °C      69.1 °F Windsor Airport
Cold spot in Ontario: -3.3 °C     26.1 °F Terrace Bay
Hot spot in Canada: 25.1 °C     77.2 °F Lytton, BC
Cold spot in Canada: -17.7 °C  0.1 °F Hanbury River, NT

Alberta: Local emergency, evacuations as wildfires grow
Digital Writers
theweathernetwork.com

Tuesday, May 21st 2019, 7:00 am - Dry, windy conditions can help wildfires rapidly spread

Wildfire season has roared to life in Alberta, as dry and windy conditions have allowed fires to more than triple in size in fewer than 24 hours.

Most of northern Alberta is under a fire ban, fire permits are currently suspended in the impacted areas, and an off-highway vehicle restriction is also in effect. Fire danger in that part of the province, along with parts of neighbouring Saskatchewan, is considered extreme or very high with seven "out of control" fires currently burning in the area.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/extreme-wildfire-danger-in-northern-alberta-slave-lake-forest-area-dry-windy-low-humidity

Praise the weather gods: It's going to feel like 30 degrees in Toronto Thursday

And you'd better dig up your sunscreen too. Environment Canada is forecasting a UV index of 7.
CBC News · Posted: May 22, 2019 10:43 PM ET | Last Updated: 9 hours ago
The mercury is expected to reach a high 25 C by Thursday afternoon with the humidex making it feel more like 30, according to Environment Canada. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

After a wind and rain-soaked letdown to the start of spring, finally Toronto will be treated to some warm — dare we say hot — weather Thursday.

The mercury is expected to reach a high 25 C by Thursday afternoon with the humidex making it feel more like 30, according to Environment Canada.

And you'd better dig up your sunscreen too. The weather agency is forecasting a UV index of seven Thursday, classified as "high."

Sure, there's also a risk of thunderstorms in the afternoon, but we'll take it.

The morning begins with a sun-cloud mix with temperatures climbing by the hour from about 15 C at 8 a.m. to 21 by noon.

If you've been waiting for warmth, 2 p.m. will be the sweet spot when the temperature will peak.

Winds are also expected to ramp up as the day goes on with gusts as powerful as 50 kilometres per hour, but the sun is expected to return again around 6 p.m.

And if that weren't lovely enough, the temperatures are expected to stay warm into the evening, falling to just 16 C by 10 p.m.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/warm-weather-toronto-1.5146095

Fire-driven weather is 'new reality' for Canada and elsewhere, expert cautions

'It's kind of like a Game of Thrones. You don't know where the dragon is going to be exhaling next'
CBC Radio · Posted: May 23, 2019 12:29 PM ET | Last Updated: May 23
Storm clouds that suck up flames, dirt and smoke from wildfires and deposit them elsewhere, also known as 'firenados,' could become a new weather reality, according to Ed Sruzik. (CBC News)

Springtime has become synonymous with wildfire season in many parts of Canada, and it's time the preparation and damage control reflected this, says Ed Struzik.

Our changing climate is directly impacting the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and it's important that Canada's approach to combating these blazes — and their resulting weather systems — is re-visited, he told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

"Our traditional response to wildfire is not going to be good enough in the future," the author of Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future said.

    'We have to learn to live with fire': How wildfires are changing Canadian summers

    Wildfires
    'A bomb ready to go off' Canada not prepared for 'inevitable wildfires' says expert

Struzik, who is also a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University, spoke with Tremonti about the devastating wildfire south of High Level, Alta., that has led to the evacuation of about 5,000 people, and what the future of wildfires looks like.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-23-2019-1.5145446/fire-driven-weather-is-new-reality-for-canada-and-elsewhere-expert-cautions-1.5146262

PHOTOS: Flash floods, powerful winds rip through Ontario
Digital Writers
theweathernetwork.com

Saturday, May 25th 2019, 9:48 pm - A cold front triggered a line of severe thunderstorms in Ontario Saturday afternoon and evening

Severe thunderstorms fired up across southern, northeastern and eastern Ontario Saturday afternoon and evening. Residents took to social media to post photos and videos of the active weather.

The storms were sparked as a cold front trekked across southern, northeastern and eastern areas of the province, quickly prompting reports of downpours, flooding, lightning, hail and strong winds (including a microburst).

It even resulted in a brief tornado warning for Little Abitibi-Kesagami Lake in northeastern Ontario Saturday evening. Environment Canada dropped it at 7:22 p.m.

The storms have since moved out and sunshine will return to Ontario on Sunday. The latest on Ontario's forecast can be found here.

Pictures and videos of Saturday's storms can be found below.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/photos-severe-thunderstorms-hit-southern-ontario

Warmer summer expected in the West spells bad news for forest fires
Updated May 27, 2019

The Chuckegg Creek wildfire burns out of control in the High Level Forest Area, near the town of High Level, Alberta.

With the wildfire season already under way in British Columbia and Alberta, Environment Canada is predicting a long, hot summer to come.

The wildfire threat has already forced evacuations in northwestern Alberta and central British Columbia, and the preliminary outlook for this summer points to worsening conditions, said David Phillips, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s senior climatologist.

“They need rain in Alberta, in British Columbia," he said. “It’s ominous with regard to the forest-fire season.”

Although the summer outlook won’t be finalized until June 1, Mr. Phillips said Environment Canada’s forecast models point to a warmer-than-normal summer for much of the country, with “too much summer out west and not enough here in the central part of Canada.”

British Columbia, most of the Prairies, all of the North, Atlantic Canada and a large part of Quebec can expect June, July and August to be warmer than normal, on average.

For those parts of the country that have had a slow start to spring, the warmer temperatures will be welcomed. "Canadians want different things for this summer: In the East, we want it to dry up, for the sun come out. … Everything is wet, wet, wet. People say it’s too cold for black flies,” Mr. Phillips said.

For the most populated regions in Central Canada, Environment Canada sees too much uncertainty to forecast the summer trends, he said.

However, the Weather Network’s chief meteorologist Chris Scott predicts the wet weather that Ontario and Quebec have experienced in May will continue during the summer months and could lead to a heightened risk of flash flooding in some areas.

He said Southern Ontario and Quebec will get their hot days, but there won’t be as many as last summer.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-warmer-summer-expected-in-the-west-spells-bad-news-for-forest-fires/
“Last summer was a deadly one,” Mr. Scott said, referencing the heat-related deaths in Quebec. “We don’t expect this summer to be as hot.”

West: Heat, wildfire relief comes with thunderstorm risk
Digital Writers
theweathernetwork.com

Wednesday, May 29th 2019, 8:00 pm - Unsettled pattern shaping up across western Canada set to provide some relief from the hot, dry conditions.

Smoky skies and challenging firefighting conditions prevail in Alberta, but an expected shift in the pattern across the region will finally bring some hope in the way of rain showers and cooler temperatures by week's end. Before temperatures moderate, however, we face a lingering thunderstorm threat -- one that has the potential to spark new fires. More on the start of this unsettled pattern and the thunderstorm threats we're watching, below.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/western-canada-heat-thunderstorm-risk-british-columbia-prairies

Windsor
Inclement weather rips through southwestern Ontario

A tornado warning was in place at one point Saturday afternoon
CBC News · Posted: Jun 01, 2019 4:43 PM ET | Last Updated: June 1
Storm clouds move across Lake Erie near John R. Park Homestead Conservation Area, close to Harrow, Ont. and Kingsville, Ont. - June 1, 2019 (Pat Allan/Facebook)

A short-lived tornado warning was issued by Environment Canada Saturday afternoon for Windsor and Essex County.

As of 4:15 p.m. the storm system had been downgraded to a thunderstorm watch by the weather agency.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/inclement-weather-rips-through-southwestern-ontario-1.5158958