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Cleantech
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Re: BC wildfiresI climbed Elephant Hill -- the site of last year's largest wildfire -- in May with my niece. It is greening up very nicely. A friend who visited from the coast with his children in July commented that he would not have known there was a fire unless it was pointed out to him. (Among other things, he backcountry skis so he is no stranger to the outdoors.) Are the summers really longer, hotter and drier? Northern Pacific Ocean temperatures have been warmer than average -- true. Otherwise, I am not sure about that. This past summer has been remarkably cool and wet. The 2 weeks plus of smoke blanket in mid-August of this year contributed to cooler temperatures too. The summer of 2017 was not hotter as far as I could determine. Parts of it were hot especially in early July when the Ashcroft Indian Reserve/Elephant Hill fire start in early July. But that time period was not unusually hot; it was unusually dry. Nuance. That fire was pushed north by 40 to 60 km winds. Strong winds are relatively common as they are in many semi-arid inter-mountain areas. May and parts of June in 2017 were cool and wet and built up fuel in the Sage Brush steppe. The smoke that blanketed us for 6 weeks plus in the summer of 2017 also cooled the summer down. It is the greater variability in the weather that strikes me as a possible consequence of anthropogenic climate change. |
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