British Columbi­a’s Greater Van­cou­ver and Low­er Main­land pop­u­la­tion cen­ters are cur­rent­ly cut off by land from the rest of Cana­da after an “atmos­pher­ic riv­er” caused severe flood­ing of rivers in the Cas­cade and Coast moun­tain ranges.

The “province on the Pacif­ic” was just begin­ning to recov­er from a sum­mer of record heat, and wild­fires which rav­aged the Fras­er Canyon town of Lyt­ton and threat­ened the ranch­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Mer­ritt with evacuation.

Mer­ritt, a ranch­ing town of 7,000, is a place where I and Rock­ies-bound hik­ing bud­dies reg­u­lar­ly stop for lunch while trav­el­ing the Coqui­hal­la High­way, the main route for recre­ation­al and com­mer­cial trav­el into inte­ri­or British Columbia.

All the town’s res­i­dents were being evac­u­at­ed Tues­day to Kelow­na and Kam­loops. The Coqui­hal­la is closed due to a mas­sive washout.

Asked about high­way clo­sures, British Colum­bia Pub­lic Works Min­is­ter (and act­ing Pre­mier) Mike Farn­worth told reporters: “In some cas­es, it can be hours, or a day to remove debris. But in some cas­es, like the Coqui­hal­la, it could be sev­er­al weeks or months.”

What hap­pened? The “atmos­pher­ic riv­er” off the Pacif­ic scored a direct hit on What­com Coun­ty and the low­er Fras­er Riv­er val­ley. Flood­wa­ters cov­ered the Tran­sCana­da High­way north of the bor­der towns of Sumas. Much of Abbots­ford has been evac­u­at­ed due to fail­ure of a pump­ing station.

Flood­ing in Abbots­ford, British Colum­bia, Cana­da (BC Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

Fur­ther east, the town of Hope is found at the junc­tion of five major high­ways, three lead­ing into the inte­ri­or. It also sits beneath 6,900-foot Mt. Cheam and oth­er peaks of the Lucky Four group.

Hope received 8.55 inch­es of rain from the atmos­pher­ic riv­er. The town has been cut off with high­ways flood­ed in all direc­tions. An esti­mat­ed 250 strand­ed motorists were holed up at Grace Bap­tist Church.

West on High­way 7, which runs north of the Fras­er Riv­er, more than three hun­dred peo­ple (and twen­ty-six dogs) had to be air­lift­ed out of the flood’s way. Both High­way 7 and the Tran­sCana­da High­way, head­ed down­stream, were closed by flood­ing. Upstream, land­slides closed the north and east­bound Tran­sCana­da High­way in the Fras­er Canyon, and High­way 3, the south­ern Trans Provin­cial High­way which pass­es through the Cascades.

About 110 miles east of Van­cou­ver, on the Trans Provin­cial High­way, the town of Prince­ton (pop­u­la­tion 3000) found itself half flood­ed from waters of the Sim­ilka­meen Riv­er, with no potable water, and with a rup­tured gas line. Mild week­end weath­er gave way to sub-freez­ing temperatures.

On Van­cou­ver Island, the dra­mat­ic Mala­hat High­way north of Vic­to­ria was closed for twelve hours a day, and open to one-way car car­a­vans, as debris were cleared.

The era of cli­mate dam­age has hit hard at a province once nick­named Canada’s “lotus land.” Mod­er­at­ing win­ter tem­per­a­tures in remote reach­es of the Chilcotin Plateau increased the pine bark bee­tle pop­u­la­tion, killing hun­dreds of miles of forests stretch­ing north and east. A Van­cou­ver-to-Ter­race flight yields views of orange (dying) and gray (dead) Lodge­pole pine forests.

The dead forests have fed wild­fires, from the vil­lage of Tele­graph Creek, on the Stikine Riv­er just above the Alas­ka bor­der, to Koote­nay Nation­al Park near the Alber­ta bor­der in the Cana­di­an Rockies.

Mount Assini­boine in British Colum­bia (Pho­to: KJL, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

In the sum­mer of 2018, our par­ty bound for Mount Assini­boine trav­eled six hun­dred and twen­ty-eight miles, through smoke from four major fires, to Can­more, Alber­ta. British Colum­bia Pre­mier John Hor­gan has spo­ken of the fires as a “new normal.”

The “heat dome” last June yield­ed Canada’s all-time tem­per­a­ture record of 49.6 degrees Cel­sius or 121.3 degrees Fahren­heit in Lytton.

Days lat­er a “wall of fire” burned nine­ty per­cent of the community.

All told, dur­ing the heat wave, British Colum­bia expe­ri­enced 486 deaths com­pared to 165 in a peri­od of nor­mal temperatures.

The main pop­u­la­tion cen­ters of British Colum­bia are flanked to the north by the Coast Range, to the east by the Cas­cades. The peaks squeeze atmos­pher­ic rivers, espe­cial­ly in places like Hope and the area around Squamish north of Vancouver.

Vis­i­tors see spec­tac­u­lar water­falls in sum­mer but can con­front rag­ing rivers dur­ing fall storms and sud­den spring runoff.

A test of British Columbia’s “Alert Ready” cell phone emer­gency warn­ing sys­tem was sched­uled for Fri­day, but was can­celed due to the ongo­ing, real emergency.