“Oroville”: A Relevant Measure of Current Environmental Paralysis
On the West Coast, what happens in California is a reliable foreshadowing of things to come at home. Geologically, the 1000km Cascadian Subduction zone and the terrains associated with it link us to Northern California, whose flora and fauna extends well north of the 49th parallel. Most of BC’s residents live in the southern edge which is a climatic extension of the Sonoran desert and Northern Californian ecosystems. Every year, the weather systems that first show up in California make themselves felt along southern BC’s coast. When California suffers an extreme drought, BC may not experience the same duration, but it too experiences at least prolonged droughts of three months or more, as we did over the past years. The general consensus is that Canadian weather is shifting to extremes. (1) Over the past decade BC has experienced with unprecedented frequency “pineapple expresses”, high winter temperatures and high southern winds that come with record precipitation, which are atmospheric rivers.(2) Just how much California’s predicament is similar to ours has been brought home by a report prepared by the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium for Metro Vancouver (Climate Projections for Metro Vancouver.)(3) Based on the “business-as-usual” scenario, which is very likely given the inability of various levels of government to take meaningful action, projections indicate that the Lower Mainland is on track to have weather similar to San Diego’s current weather...
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