We are forecast to reach 35 with a Humidex of 38, but that doesn’t take into account the smoky haze of the past few days. On Friday I asked around to see where the haze was coming from and got some interesting answers. Today we have awoken to haze again, so we might not see the 35°C high that is forecast. However, if we look at the last few days of satellite pictures. It does look like the smoke is dispersing and moving to the south, check it out:
You can see the smoke gathered in the Interior on Thursday the 26th and then get expelled onto the coast and work its way down over the past few days.
This mornings picture directly above shows just the lower portions of Vancouver Island with smoke, so if it continues to move along today, we might get closer to our forecasted high temperatures than we did Friday and especially yesterday when we only barely got over 30°C.
The smoke is also “visible” in the air quality monitoring data at Alberni Elementary. It is not up enough to cause great concern, but it certainly seems to be there. These are 24hr average values so it may have been higher or lower during the circled period.
And where is the smoke coming from? Well, most I think is from fires in the interior, but there are other sources further afield. Remember those big fires last week in Greece, well, it just so happens there was a bit of a path, through Siberia, for that smoke to make it all the way here!
There's likely a contribution from some distant sources (very rough approximation of flow) given that the NH has been in a rather blocked pattern for more than a week… #WhatGoesAroundComesAround pic.twitter.com/cP9LFQwPSI
— Chris Doyle (@ensembleator) July 27, 2018
I expect us to get above 30°C today as the smoke clears and tomorrow we should feel the full brunt of our extended heat wave again. Tuesday will be hot as well but will hopefully also mark the start of a cooling trend back to normal temperature and cloudier skies, though no rain is in the forecast yet for the next 7 days.
One last thing… all these fires… we knew this was going to happen. Here is a tweet from a former vice-Chair of the IPCC this morning:
Scientists have been saying for decades (!) this would happen: “Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer”. Time for an emergency plan to reduce CO2 emissions to ZERO, which means leaving fossil fuels in the ground!… https://t.co/doEs6Cm77p
— Prof. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (@Mastodon.World) (@JPvanYpersele) July 28, 2018
Have a great Sunday and see you at PrideFest!
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