“It will warm up a little bit,” one volunteer could be overheard saying hopefully of the temperature, which hovered below the freezing mark. “It’s trying.”

Despite the snow and a smaller-than-expected crowd, Gendron and others were taking the wacky weather with a dose of good humour.

“Someone came up to me and said, ‘you really should have your walk in April instead of December,’” said Gendron.

“We’ve got pictures of last year’s walk and people were wearing shorts. Not this year.”

Not this year indeed. According to Environment Canada, chilly weekend temperatures shattered weather records dating back prior to the Great Depression.

The temperature only reached 2 degrees Saturday, besting (although that word may be inappropriate) the previous April 19 record low-high of 4.4 degrees, set in 1927. A similar record, one dating back to 1923, was put on ice Sunday, with a maximum high of just 6.2 degrees. And that night’s teeth chattering low of -6 degrees beat the old April 20 record of -4.4 recorded in both 1909 and 1957.

While no firm data exists, the 10 millimetres of participation recorded at an automatic station was likely 10 centimetres of snow and probably set an April record, beating 7.6 centimetres recorded April 4, 1903.

Gendron, for his part, preferred to focus on the positive. The day before, the MS Society had walked with students at Silver Star school, where more than $7,000 was raised.

Sure, maybe the original route around the school had to be ditched for the school’s track due to swirling snow, but Gendron preferred to focus on the money raised for a needy cause.

“We’re really lucky Silver Star helped us out.”

A couple hours later and the temperature had warmed up just a little as participants entered the Talkin Donkey coffee shop for the first Global Warming Café to be held in the interior.

The irony of the weather was impossible to ignore, but organizers pointed out that climate change does not mean the thermometer will always be north of zero.

“It’s the heat from the sun that powers our weather system, so if you add more heat to the system we’re going to get more powerful weather, and it’s not just heat,” said Bill Darnell.

For example, he said, “If the Greenland Glacier melts and changes the composition of the North Atlantic and the currents change and the Gulf Stream doesn’t go to Europe, it’s global warming but Europe is going to be much colder.”

As for the inevitable comments about the paradox of global warming and snow in April, Darnell said they show more education is needed.

“I think it just means we need to have a deeper understanding.”

At Environment Canada, Doug Lundquist was busy looking at record after record that had fallen to the nasty April weather.

“I’ve looked at all sorts of records from across Southern B.C. and everywhere I look (records) are just falling like flies,” he said.

However, Lundquist wasn’t ready to say global warming – or a lack thereof – played a role in the chilly weekend, instead attributing the frigid temperatures and snow to an Arctic front that got shuttled south by a upper low from the north.

“It’s normal to get extremes,” he said.  Source

Write comment
Name:
Email:
Subject:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."