What's Hotter Than Vegas Must Not Stay In Vegas.

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Update, July 1: No 'context' is required any longer given the devastating wildfire that has raged through Lytton.

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Context
MattersVille

Here in Lotusland Central the marine air has arrived.

But that does not mean we should forget about what just happened here, climate-wise.

Meterologist Eric Holthaus, the founder of the climate website 'Currently',  has put things in perspective in The Guardian. Here is his lede:

On Sunday, the small mountain town of Lytton, British Columbia, became one of the hottest places in the world. Then, on Monday, Lytton got even hotter – 47.9C (118F) – hotter than it’s ever been in Las Vegas, 1,300 miles to the south. And by Tuesday, 49.6C (121F).

Lytton is at 50 deg N latitude – about the same as London. This part of the world should never get this hot. Seattle’s new all-time record of 108F, also set Monday, is hotter than it’s ever been in Miami. In Portland, the new record of 116F would beat the warmest day ever recorded in Houston by nearly 10 degrees...

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Meanwhile, despite my previous thankfulness for the rain we had a couple of weeks ago, all bets are off because the wildfires have already started...

Evacuation orders have been issued for homes near two growing wildfires in B.C.'s Interior, where an unprecedented heat wave has created dangerous fire conditions.

The latest evacuation order came late Tuesday night for a number of properties in Electoral Area B in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, where some properties are threatened by the Mckay Creek wildfire, located 23 kilometres north of Lillooet.

The fire was first spotted on Tuesday afternoon, and by 10:30 p.m. PT it was already estimated at 5,000 hectares, or about 50 square kilometres.

Earlier in the day, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District declared a state of local emergency because of the Sparks Lake fire, located about an hour northwest of Kamloops, and residents of nine properties in Electoral Area J are being told to pack up and leave...



Not to mention the potential for rapid snow-melt induced flooding...

A flood watch for the Upper Fraser River in B.C.'s Interior has been upgraded to a warning as river levels continue to rise amid the heat wave affecting most of the province...

{snip}

"The extremely hot temperatures have triggered an astounding amount of snowmelt at the higher elevations of the Upper Fraser River," the B.C. River Forecast Centre said in the warning. 

The forecast centre said that areas that still have snowpack are melting at a rate of up to 100 millimetres of snow water equivalent each day... 

Perhaps this is a good time for all of us, including, and perhaps most especially, those of us that support the current provincial and/or federal governments, to go and read Norm Farrell's latest which begins thusly:

Catherine McKenna spent four years as Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Monday, she announced her intention not to run for office in the next election, saying she wanted more time to focus on family and climate.

It says a great deal when a high-ranking person at the centre of national policy-making leaves government to work on the climate crisis. She remains silent about the dedication of Canada and its three western provinces to expanded fossil fuel production, including bitumen mined from Alberta tar sands, the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet.


The point being that it is we (i.e. those who voted for our current governments) that can do the most to make sure that they do the real right thing when it comes to dealing with climate change.

OK?

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