Tag: drought

Heat trig­gers new blazes

More than a dozen new fires emerge as warn­ings con­tinue for parts of province

Smoke from the Sailor Bar wildfire fills the air north of Yale, B.C., on Sunday. More than 80 wildfires are burning in the province.

This article was written by Brenna Owen and was published in the Toronto Star on August 29, 2025.

The num­ber of act­ive wild­fires in Brit­ish Columbia has leapt by more than a dozen in a spate of hot, sunny weather that has sent daily tem­per­at­ure records tum­bling.

BC Wild­fire Ser­vice fig­ures show more than 80 act­ive blaz­ es on Thursday, up from 68 the day before.

The ser­vice’s latest pro­vin­cial situ­ation report says forest fuels remain highly sus­cept­ible to igni­tion, and incom­ing thun­ der­storms across south­ern B.C. are expec­ted to bring a risk of light­ning to coastal areas and the south­ern Interior.

The update pos­ted Thursday notes camp­fire bans came into effect across the Cari­boo and Kam­loops fire centres at noon.

A ban was already in place in the Coastal fire centre, with the excep­tion of Haida Gwaii and a por­tion of the cent­ral coast near the north­ern tip of Van­couver Island.

The update comes after the B.C. gov­ern­ment issued a state­ment urging people to abide by fire pro­hib­i­tions over the Labour Day long week­end.

About 20 wild­fires were clas­si­fied as burn­ing out of con­trol on Thursday, up from four on Monday, includ­ing a cluster of new starts in the north­west­ern part of the Cari­boo region.

The wild­fire ser­vice’s map also shows sev­eral new blazes detec­ted Thursday in con­servancy areas north­w­est of Whist­ler.

In the Okanagan, an evac­u­ation alert was lif­ted Thursday for 58 prop­er­ties at the south end of Peach­land, where a fire sparked by a motorhome veer­ing off the high­way Tues­day night con­tin­ues to be held at about 1.4 hec­tares.

The blaze had knocked out power for nearly 700 homes, an out­age that stretched into Wed­nes­day, but the BC Hydro web­site shows it has since been restored.

While cooler tem­per­at­ures have returned to Metro Van­couver, with the regional dis­trict lift­ing a smog advis­ory for the Fraser Val­ley, heat warn­ings remain in effect for parts of the south­ern Interior along with inland sec­tions of the north coast.

The weather office says tem­per­at­ures reach­ing 34 to 38 C are expec­ted in the Fraser Canyon and South Thompson, and tem­per­at­ures of 29 C or higher are fore­cast to per­sist in the Ter­race and Kitimat areas through tomor­row.

Envir­on­ment Canada has lif­ted its heat warn­ing for the cent­ral coast.

Daily max­imum tem­per­at­ure records have been tum­bling across B.C. since last week­end, with 13 areas record­ing new highs for Aug. 27.

They include Cache Creek, where the tem­per­at­ure of 39.5 C broke the pre­vi­ous record of 36.1 C set in 2017, and Kam­loops, where the mer­cury hit 37 C, sur­pass­ing the earlier high of 35 C set in 1933.

It was 40.1 C in Lyt­ton on Wed­nes­day, 39.4 in Lil­looet and 36.1 C in Clear­wa­ter, tem­per­at­ures that set new daily records in those areas.

The high of 32.5 C in the north­ern com­munity of Fort Nel­son tied the pre­vi­ous daily record set in 2023.

Prairie farmers face ninth year of droughts, reducing yields

This article was written by Jeremy Simes and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 7, 2025.

Red lentils grow in a dry field in June on Quinton Jacksteit’s farm near Golden Prairie, Sask.

It’s the ninth year in a row Quinton Jacksteit’s farm has experienced drought.

The southwest Saskatchewan farmer, who also is the reeve for the Rural Municipality of Big Stick, says his crops are extremely short, and he plans to salvage most of them for animal feed.

“They’re not going to be able to make much of a yield,” he said in a recent interview from his home near Golden Prairie, east of the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary.

“I’m going to scrape through and maybe be able to go another year, but I have a couple of boys that want to farm, and it’s not something that I would recommend to them at this particular time.”

Others are worse off, he added.

“It may be the end for them. That could be a three- or fourgeneration farm.”

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s drought monitor shows swaths of the country have been anywhere from abnormally dry to extremely parched.

Trevor Hadwen, an agriclimate specialist with the department, said southwest Saskatchewan, near the Alberta boundary, has been severely depleted of moisture for eight years. This year, he said, pastures have dried up and ranchers are looking to buy extra hay they can’t grow.

Some have also reduced their herds or moved cattle to green pastures.

“Sometimes, that’s been 300, 400 kilometres away,” Mr. Hadwen said.

“For crop producers, we’re seeing a reduction in yield potential. Crops are maturing much more rapidly than you would hope and will not produce as much seed content.”

Alberta’s Peace River region in the northwest, as well as the province’s southwest corner, are also arid, he added.

In Saskatchewan, Big Stick and neighbouring municipalities have declared states of emergency to spread awareness of the drought. Virginia Maier, the reeve of Enterprise, said her peas likely won’t produce pods.

Nor does she expect her durum to grow without rain.

“Everything is short, everything is dying,” Ms. Maier said. “When [drought] goes on for so many years, it’s starting to get depressing.”

She said costs for fertilizer and other inputs have been high while crop prices are low.

“I think we’ll be OK, but there are others saying, ‘Do I just get out and sell the land and rent it and just be done with it?’ ”

In the province’s northern agricultural region, a dry spring is expected to cut hay yields by 50 per cent, said Christine Strube, who farms and ranches northwest of Prince Albert.

Ms. Strube said a recent decision by the province and Ottawa to allow farmers to sell their regular crops as animal feed without getting dinged on insurance will be helpful.

“The key thing now is that we just get some consistent rains throughout the summer,” she said.

Mr. Jacksteit said additional changes to crop insurance are needed, including a per-acre payment or a program that would allow farmers to salvage seed without getting penalized on their coverage.

“We’ve just gotten into a state where expenses are climbing and at the same time, our insurance coverages have dropped to a point of where they no longer cover the cost of that farm,” he said.

“We’re not trying to be beggars or anything like that. We’re just trying to make the government aware that our programs aren’t working.”

Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Ministry, in a statement, said the province is willing to work with Ottawa to discuss how they can enhance insurance programs. It said there are options available for farmers who choose not to divert their crops to feed.

Mr. Hadwen said the summer weather outlook is not favourable for drought-ridden regions.

“There’s still a little bit of time to recover for some areas, but other areas are probably in for it for the summer,” he said.

Environment and Climate

Change Canada’s forecast predicts a warmer-than-usual summer with uncertain precipitation levels. Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with the weather office, recently said human pollution has been a key influence on hotter summers.

Tinder dry conditions have also created the fuel needed to start hundreds of wildfires across the country, forcing thousands in Manitoba and Saskatchewan to flee their communities earlier this spring.

As of Friday, Manitoba has reported 60 active wildfires, with residents of Lynn Lake now being told they’ll have to evacuate for a second time. Saskatchewan has reported 65 active fires, with five communities under evacuation.

Don Connick, who farms near Gull Lake in southwest Saskatchewan, said long-term planning is needed to deal with persistent drought.

A director with the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, Mr. Connick said farmers should consider changing how they graze cattle and create a network to supply hay to those in short supply.

More research and water retention ponds also are needed, he added.

“[Drought] is happening year after year after year,” he said. “Crop insurance has been very helpful in this, but again, they have limitations as to what they can do.”

World’s rivers faced the driest year in more than three decades in 2023: UN weather agency

This article was written by Jamey Keaten and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 8, 2024.

A part of the Negro River is dry at its port in Manaus, Brazil, last week amid severe drought.

The UN weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers, as the record hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places.

The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the past five decades, warning that ice melt can threaten long term water security for millions of people globally.

“Water is the canary in the coal mine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing the report on Monday.

She said rising temperatures had in part led the hydrological cycle to become “more erratic and unpredictable” in ways that can produce “either too much or too little water” through both droughts and floods.

The weather agency, citing figures from UN Water, says some 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year – and that figure is expected to rise to five billion by 2050.

The world faced the hottest year on record in 2023, and the summer of this year was also the hottest summer ever – raising warning signs for a possible new annual record in 2024.

“In the [past] 33 years of data, we had never such a large area around the world which was under such dry conditions,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of hydrology, water and cryosphere at WMO.

WMO called for improvements in data collection and sharing to help clear up the real picture for water resources and help countries and communities take action in response.

The report said the southern United States, Central America and South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay faced widespread drought conditions and “the lowest water levels ever observed in Amazon and in Lake Titicaca,” on the border between Peru and Bolivia.

WMO said half of the world faced dry-river-flow conditions last year.

Here’s is the WMO’s press release on its State of Global Water Resources 2023 report.

Here is the video about the State of Global Water Resources 2023 report:

Here is the WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2023 report.

RIVER LEVEL AT AMAZON RAINFOREST PORT HITS 122-YEAR LOW AMID DROUGHT

This article was written by Reuters News and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 5, 2024.

The river port in the Amazon rainforest’s largest city of Manaus on Friday hit its lowest level since 1902, as a drought drains waterways and snarls transport of grain exports and essential supplies that are the region’s lifeline.

Below-average rainfall – even through the rainy season – has plagued the Amazon and much of South America since last year, also feeding the worst wildfires in more than a decade in Brazil and Bolivia. Researchers say climate change is the main culprit.

Scientists predict the Amazon region may not fully recover moisture levels until 2026.

Last year, the drought became a humanitarian crisis, as people reliant on rivers were stranded without food, water or medicine.

This year authorities are already on alert. In hard-hit Amazonas state, at least 62 municipalities are under states of emergency with more than half a million people affected, according to the state’s civil defence corps.

“This is now the most severe drought in over 120 years of measurement at the Port of Manaus,” said Valmir Mendonca, the port’s head of operations, who said the river level is likely to keep falling for another week or two. With the region never fully recovering due to weakerthan-usual seasonal rains, many of the impacts of the drought last year look set to repeat or reach new extremes.

The Port of Manaus measured the Rio Negro river at 12.66 metres on Friday, according to its website, surpassing the previous all-time low recorded last year and still falling rapidly. The Rio Negro is a major tributary of the Amazon River, the world’s largest river by volume. The port sits near the “meeting of the waters” where the Negro meets the Solimoes, which also hit a record low this week.

National disaster monitoring agency Cemaden has already called the drought Brazil’s worst such event since at least the 1950s.