VANCOUVER — Flood warnings were issued Wednesday for several major rivers in British Columbia as a federal scientist says record-setting rainfall and alpine temperatures are consistent with climate change.
Armel Castellan, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said fall’s floods on the heels of summer’s extreme heat is in line with expected trends.
“Unfortunately, this is consistent with what climate change has been projecting for all parts of Canada, including the mid-latitudes here in B.C.,” he told a news conference Wednesday.
“It’s not to say it’s always going to be this extreme all the time, we will see lulls, of course. But the frequency, amplitude of these events, and their longevity individually, will continue to increase with the coming years and decades.”
November saw unprecedented rainfall in places like Abbotsford, which shattered previous monthly records by about 99 millimetres. Weather stations in Nanaimo, Victoria, Abbotsford and at Vancouver’s airport all broke seasonal precipitation records for September, October and November combined, he said.
Temperature records were also broken Wednesday and Castellan said they could exceed records for December.
The high-elevation heat is particularly problematic because the snowpack is thin, which means it melts more easily, adding to runoff, he said. However, La Nina — cooler than normal waters in parts of the Pacific Ocean — should bolster the snowpack beginning in January, he added.
Anticipated snowmelt was one of the reasons the District of Hope placed 114 properties along the Coquihalla River on evacuation alert Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the Coquihalla was one of several major waterways where the River Forecast Centre upgraded flood watches to warnings, meaning that river levels have exceeded their banks or will exceed them imminently, causing flooding of adjacent areas.
Flood warnings were also issued for the Chilliwack River, the Lower Fraser tributaries and the Tulameen, Similkameen, Coldwater and Lower Nicola rivers, as well as Spius Creek.
Rivers were expected to rise throughout the day and the centre warned that conditions were changing rapidly.
The flood warnings come as southern and coastal British Columbia entered the tail end of severe weather that meteorologists have described as a “parade” of storms with dozens of weather warnings in place across the region.
There were four dozen evacuation orders in communities in southern B.C. due to floods and another 11 orders because of landslides.