‘Normal Weather Doesn’t Exists Anymore’: Climatologist Dave Phillips – The Energy Mix
From an overheating Arctic to a frigid B.C. Lower Mainland and Maritimes, from a parched (then drowning) Prairie region to an epically deluged Eastern Canada, the fingerprints of the climate crisis were all over the extreme weather events experienced by Canadians in 2019, says legendary Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips.Speaking with National Observer about his 24th year putting together an annual list of the nation’s top weather stories, Phillips said 2019 felt very different in its extremity and strangeness.“It’s like normal weather doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. And the departure from the norm is a problem, since “we base everything on normal weather. We build houses, we build schools, we plant crops and seeds and trees and go on vacation based on normal weather.”Commenting on his top weather event for the year—the biblically-proportioned flooding on the Ottawa River—Phillips said rising waters were very much a core theme for the year, with “enormous floods” reported throughout Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.