The town additionally discovered it had formally taken over because the climate alert capital of the nation.
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Ottawa’s climate in 2023 can be remembered for its data and its extremes, odd, unhealthy and smoky.
“It definitely wasn’t boring,” Setting Canada senior climatologist David Phillips stated of the Nationwide Capital Area’s yr of climate. “There have been moments that made it extraordinarily attention-grabbing from a climate standpoint.”
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This yr produced the primary winter in 52 years that was so unseasonably heat and so heavy with snow that the Rideau Canal by no means opened for skating.
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The bizarre winter circumstances left the canal’s ice floor skinny, porous and unsafe regardless of virtually $1 million spent on readying it for the annual pilgrimage of skaters.
The Nationwide Capital Fee got here tantalizingly near elevating the canal’s inexperienced flag. The mercury plummeted to -33.1 C on Feb. 4 — the coldest day of the winter — nevertheless it was adopted by a warming pattern that peaked on Feb. 15 when it reached 9.6 C, all however ending any hope for canal skating.
“The chilly simply wasn’t constant sufficient,” Phillips stated.
Ottawa’s uncommon winter was capped with an uncommon spring ice storm on April 5. The storm dumped 9 hours of ice pellets and freezing rain (25-30 mm) on town. Gusting winds introduced down electrical wires and tree branches burdened with ice.
Greater than 163,000 houses and companies have been left with out electrical energy — 45 per cent of Hydro Ottawa’s complete buyer base — whereas 5 of town’s LRT trains needed to be deserted on the tracks. Each the LRT and the overwhelming majority of hydro prospects have been again in enterprise two days later, however the full clean-up took weeks.
The storm got here 25 years after the Nice Ice Storm of January 1998, a five-day January occasion that dumped 85 millimetres of freezing rain on Ottawa and triggered a state of emergency.
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This yr, a heat, dry spring created harmful forest circumstances, significantly in northern Ontario and Quebec, the place huge wildfires burned uncontrolled for weeks. The ensuing smoke blanketed Ottawa for days in June. In keeping with Setting Canada, the smoke decreased visibility in Ottawa for a complete of 157 hours.
The town’s air high quality deteriorated to ranges by no means earlier than recorded within the capital. Ottawa’s air high quality was among the many worst on the planet in late June, resulting in cancelled sporting occasions and a surge within the variety of folks going to hospital with respiratory illnesses.
July introduced rain and thunderstorms to Ottawa, which ensured the area didn’t endure its personal forest fires. However the unstable climate introduced each harmful lightning strikes — and tornadoes.
Two Ottawa golfers have been struck by lightning on June 26 whereas on target on the Loch March Golf and Nation Membership. Jesse Hawkins, 36, an expectant father and an teacher in plane upkeep at Algonquin Faculty, and Justin Newsom, 37, a federal authorities IT analyst, each died from their accidents.
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The area noticed greater than eight instances the variety of lightning strikes in July 2023 than it did in the identical month final yr, in keeping with information from Hydro Ottawa. The utility reported 6,066 lightning strikes inside a 50-kilometre radius of Ottawa in July 2023, in comparison with 736 in July 2022.
Consequently, Hydro Ottawa stated, it handled 138 energy outages in July, up from 91 in the identical month a yr earlier.
Two tornadoes touched down in Barrhaven on July 13, and one other twister hit the Findlay Creek space on Aug. 3. (Two small tornadoes additionally touched down in Embrun and Fournier in July.)
The Barrhaven tornadoes, which packed winds of as much as 155 km/h, broken greater than 120 houses, uprooted bushes, downed energy strains and scattered particles.
The occasions raised extra questions on whether or not Ottawa now finds itself in a brand new “twister alley” provided that town has now been hit by a minimum of six vital tornadoes since 2018, when a robust EF-3 twister devastated Dunrobin. It was probably the most highly effective tornado seen in Jap Ontario since 1902.
This summer time additionally featured a downpour so intense that it overwhelmed Ottawa’s new, purpose-built sewage and stormwater storage tunnel. A climate station on the Central Experimental Farm recorded 77 millimetres of rain in 5 hours on Aug. 10.
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The downpour despatched 316 million litres of contaminated water pouring into the Ottawa River in what was the worst sewage overflow because the metropolis’s $232-million Mixed Sewage Storage Tunnel went into service in 2020. The storm additionally flooded basements and underpasses, and made sections of Colonnade Highway, Walkey Highway, Maitland Avenue, Meadowlands Drive and Heron Highway impassable.
The autumn introduced one other climate file in Ottawa: the warmest days ever measured in October. On Oct. 3, throughout an unprecedented late fall warmth wave, the mercury hit 30.9 C, and the next day, 30.1 C.
Ottawa had by no means earlier than booked temperatures above 30 C in October in 141 years of record-keeping, in keeping with Setting Canada.
“We’ve by no means seen that ever earlier than,” Phillips stated.
What was additionally uncommon, Phillips stated, was that Ottawa’s first day above 30 C occurred on April 13, and its final on Oct. 4. That represented the longest stretch between 30 C days in Ottawa’s historical past. But surprisingly, town didn’t file a single day above 30 C between July 12 and Sept. 3.
“It’s certainly one of these head shakers,” Phillips stated. “It’s such an oddity.”
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Ottawa’s unusual and unstable 2023 got here throughout a yr wherein town discovered it had formally taken over because the climate alert capital of the nation.
Knowledge launched by Setting Canada in February revealed that Ottawa had 65 climate advisories and warnings within the earlier yr — greater than some other of the nation’s main inhabitants centres. It was the primary time Ottawa topped the climate alert desk, which has been beforehand dominated by Quebec Metropolis.
Phillips stated Ottawa’s 2023’s climate supplied extra proof of local weather change and its attendant oddities. Local weather change promotes variability, he stated, and implies that the local weather previous can now not function a reliable prologue.
“It’s virtually as if previous local weather shouldn’t be essentially an indicator of what the long run goes to be: parts of it, for positive, however there are these wild playing cards that exist now,” he stated. “What we’ve to cope with is a higher vary of variability, a higher vary of temperatures.”
This winter can be influenced by El Nino, a local weather sample that brings heat ocean water to the Pacific coast. El Nino winters in Ottawa are typically milder with frequent freeze-thaw cycles, Phillips stated, and a beneficiant mixture of rain, snow and freezing rain.
“El Nino shouldn’t be going to cancel winter: There can be chilly days,” he stated, “however you may anticipate a yo-yo sample of melting and freezing.”
The Nice Ice Storm of 1998, Phillips famous, occurred throughout a earlier El Nino winter.
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