People walk along a sidewalk as waves and debris crash into the breakwater below Dallas Rd. in Victoria, B.C., on Nov. 20.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
The mayor’s sleep was marred by the wind howling more than 100 kilometres an hour in Port Hardy, B.C., on the northeastern edge of Vancouver Island. But Pat Corbett-Labatt was soon grateful the massive storm that pummelled her tiny town and many others had not killed anyone, despite numerous trees falling onto houses, businesses and power lines.
Ms. Corbett-Labbatt toured her community on Wednesday morning to assess the wreckage wrought by a bomb cyclone weather system over the previous 24 hours. The mayor said she was also thankful her neighbour had cleared the copse of pine and alder in the lot next door that used to groan and sway during previous, weaker, storms.
“We’re okay, but when I drive around Port Hardy today and see the destruction, where houses have been hit, it’s scary,” she said, noting she had never before seen a windstorm cancel school and shut down businesses during her five decades there.
BC Hydro says most of the blacked-out customers were on Vancouver Island.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
Wind gusts in the town topped out at 122 km/h, breaking an all-time record, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
BC Hydro reported on Wednesday morning that 100,000 homes were without power across the province, although the utility had made significant progress, reconnecting some 170,000 other customers hit by outages at the peak of the storm.
The hurricane-force winds that swirled off B.C.’s coast and slammed into Vancouver Island also severed highways and forced ferry cancellations. Gusts exceeded 100 km/h in multiple areas late Tuesday, including 80 km/h at Vancouver’s airport and 170 km/h on Sartine Island, an ecological reserve for seabirds off the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
A person walks a dog as waves and debris crash into the breakwater below Dallas Rd. in Victoria, B.C., on Nov. 20. Severe weather conditions overnight caused power outages across Vancouver Island.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
The power utility said it expected further outages on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday evening, as wind and rain warnings from Environment Canada remained for those regions. The Transportation Ministry says multiple highways on Vancouver Island have been closed because of downed power lines, fallen trees and debris, with more closures expected as the storm moves through.
By midday Wednesday, BC Ferries said it had cancelled roughly 170 sailings including on many of its major routes between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, as well as many of its smaller routes to other islands.
A low pressure storm system known as a 'bomb cyclone' moves off the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada in a composite satellite image on Nov. 20.CIRA/NOAA/Reuters
Alexander Pett was sitting near the walk-on passenger gate at Swartz Bay terminal, near Victoria, where she had been anxiously waiting two hours Wednesday morning to board and get to a work appointment in Vancouver.
“It’s a mess,” she said, adding that, while she is used to weather-related delays, passengers were getting impatient after multiple, consecutive cancellations. “People need to get on with their lives.”
Sailings resumed later in the morning, with other customers sanguine about the chaos.
“This is the price we pay for living on Fantasy Island,” said Jodie Frazer, who was commuting from her home in Victoria to visit her sister in Metro Vancouver. She was able to depart on time on the 11 a.m. ferry.
Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said this fall’s storm season on the West Coast has been especially active, but not exceptionally so.
A powerful storm is bearing down on the West Coast and bringing with it a scary-sounding weather term. That term is bomb cyclone.
The Associated Press
However, he said in an interview Wednesday the storm that began the day before is “a little bit unique” because of a convergence of several factors. High winds were sustained, not merely gusts, and weather patterns of drought and then copious rainfall has made trees more susceptible to toppling and causing damage.
A bomb cyclone system is a non-tropical storm caused by a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure at its centre.
Meteorologist Cindy Day said there’s nothing alarmist about Environment Canada using the “bomb cyclone” term, noting that, when used appropriately, such scientific language is necessary and can help people better prepare for the impact of extreme weather events.
She added that the term had been used by scientists for decades to describe “a low-pressure system that is undergoing explosive cyclogenesis,” or the creation of cyclonic air circulation.
The storm also swept across the northwest U.S. at the same time, causing widespread power outages there and downing trees that killed at least one person.
With reports from The Canadian Press and Associated Press