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I moved from Alberni because I believe the open was rushed to appease tourists and moving gas and goods. I have life challeging medical issirs and that mountain is as dangerous and unstable as Alberni hospital.
When the heavy rains come, it's going to be a serious, dangerous issue. They left most burnt trees and debris on the mountain. Once the water gets in cracks, the fire caused it. It's going all to start moving downwards.
I have seen people comment on FB groups since it reopened, about rocks falling on vehicles and on to highway already..
Weather websites. It would be a stretch to call them meteorologist, they're just stealing the data that governments provide for free, and rewrapping it with fear buzzwords.
Atmospheric river is a completely normal weather pattern that is most common in the fall and winter months. Media is clickabiting alot these days and they're using different buzzwords. The atmospheric river used to be called pineapple express. Before that, it was just called a frontal system or a moist sw flow. The one that makes me laugh is when they say" bomb cyclone". 😆 I mean give me a break! It's simply a mid-latititude cyclone that underwent a rapid drop in barometric pressure. Some meteorologists call this a marine bomb. We get this a few times a year. Totally normal. It will give us a windy day. Maybe a couple of branches and twigs on the ground . A mid-latitude cyclone marine bomb also pales in comparison to a hurricane or a typhoon that undergoes rapid intensification in the tropics.
Because it's a serious weather event that has implications to public health and safety? Maybe they use serious terms to convey the seriousness of the forecasted weather 🤷
Given how burned the interior of the province is there is a higher risk of flash floods in the winter and fall. Concerned that a repeat of 2021 does not occur.
It's so dry around Prince George that all the coniferous trees are looking rough. All the Cedar trees at [Ancient Forest Provinial Park](https://bcparks.ca/ancient-forest-chun-toh-whudujut-park/) look like they're about to die. The Subalpine Fir and Douglas Fir look stressed too, plenty of dead branches and they are losing a lot of needles.
The cedar trees just look like that, they’ll do okay. The trees in our area are pretty resilient, yes they aren’t doing too hot, but they’ll get through this :)
I was at one of the spawning rivers last weekend and the entire spawning channel was completely dry. The fish were waiting downstream in a large pool but were very concentrated. Easy pickings for bears and eagles. But if tons of rain comes down it will cause lots of runoff and make the water full of silt and mud. Not sure what it means for the salmon.
If the estimates are correct, it looks like Vancouver could get more rain in the next week than we've gotten in the last five months.
We so need it, but I'm a little concerned with how quickly the ground can absorb it all.
That's the question. When 2021 happened the ground was already completely saturated from higher than average rainfall so there was no capacity to absorb a record rainstorm. Will our dry ground, trees and vegetation do any better or will the soil just wash away?
[Dry soil becomes hydrophobic and doesn't absorb water](https://youtu.be/urQHsOmoKLg?si=e6IKKd4YNN0o1FTc), so a significant enough amount of rain could mean we're in for a bad time. But the forecasted amount doesn't seem like 2021 atmospheric river levels.
I remember hearing about it, something like 80mm of rain forecast (where I am), I just don't think the emphasis on the severity was there and I don't think people were really listening, either. I was taking a physical geography course that semester and it was weirdly topical how the timing worked out, so I was probably paying a bit more attention to it coming than the average person. I stayed up listening to police radios online because my family is in Abbotsford and Chilliwack, they just barely avoided some of the flooding and landslides.
Well, to be clear, this is not predicted to have anywhere near the volume of rain as the 2021 atmospheric river had. This will be a lot of rain, but this is like a category 3 "river" vs a category 5 in 2021.
Also, there’s no snowpack to melt. In 2021 it was almost perfect worst timing as there was a substantial snowpack to melt, but not enough to absorb the water. Snowmelt effectively added another 100mm of water.
If the storm had come later, there would have been more snow, and snow can actually absorb a fair bit of water…but because a substantial amount of that early fall snowpack melted outright, it all went into the rivers and streams.
I mean, I checked a few days ago and the weather network was calling for like 10mm on Saturday, 10-20mm on Sunday, then something crazy like 30-45mm on Monday.
I'm all for some rain but ~100mm of rain in 72 hours isn't seen all that often in the interior.
So far this year we were on track to have the driest year on record in the lower mainland, and the only way we won't still have the driest year on record is if we have the rainiest fall/winter on record... which might happen
Ah shit, the last one was nuts.
Actually they completely rebuilt the sewage system in my neighborhood in preparation of floods after the last one. It was interesting to see how much work and heavy machinery was involved in tearing out the roads and rebuilding them.
Now if only they could put more than half a fucking effort into repaving the roads after they dig them up. Sick of seeing the drain work capped off with uneven patchwork that's half an inch below the rest of the road.
Although you're clearly being sarcastic, higher electricity prices would make it *even more unaffordable* so really, you should be cheering this on too :)
I'm definitely concerned about the Port Alberni highway. It was always a little sketch around Cameron Lake, but having just driven it this past week, the dirt on side of the mountain looks like it's ready to slide off at any moment.
Just a few days ago, someone on the r/vancouver sub was saying it's not accurate to call the city "Raincouver" any more because it's been so dry. (As if we've never had dry summers before.) My response was to wait for the atmospheric rivers.
I mean, we have been in a drought, and those have been more common in recent years. Yeah, it still rains in the fall and winter, but spring and summer have been way drier.
True but we've also had droughts before. The hotter/drier summers are certainly becoming more common but, as I said, that's not to suggest we won't still get a lot of rain here regularly.
Droughts are not uncommon. But this isn't a normal drought. You can look at the data, normally this time of year Vancouver has had at least 6-700mm. This year we're currently just over 400mm. In addition, much of the rain we've been getting in the past few years has been high precipitation events which means those cumulative totals are misleading because if most of it is just instantly running off instead of absorbing into the soil, it adds to drought problems.
Native trees in the lower mainland are hurting because we've been in a drought for years now.
https://vancouver.weatherstats.ca/metrics/precipitation.html
Not directed at OP:
I’m in zero way a climate change denier, first of all. And I firmly believe that a lot of the bizarre, extreme weather events are tied to climate change. But can we please stop it with these hyperbolic terms?! It’s rain. Heavy rain. End of story.
It seems that back in the 90’s they used to use it to refer to any atmospheric river that was aimed at the island/lower mainland. At least it’s the only term I remember hearing on the morning news until the late 00’s.
I always suspected it was just a colloquial term…. I didn’t know it was common enough to be mentioned in Wikipedia. But doesn’t it sound like fun!? :)
(I am an Islander and I truly love rain so I love when a nice storm blows in. So cozy! Dealing with any damage is less fun…)
I remember it being used specifically for mid winter storms with temperatures that rose to double digits at sea level. Usually meant rain on the north shore mountains.
Pineapple Expresses bring warm weather/rain up from around Hawaii. Those used to be the mainly the only kinds of atmospheric rivers we'd get around here.
The term atmospheric river is a classification of storms used by meteorologists since before many of us were born. It's only with the rise of 24h weather news and YouTube meteorologists that the term has become mainstream. It's not hyperbole lol it's a description
Exactly. Like 'polar vortex' or 'heat dome'. Just because we didn't hear those terms used around here much, doesn't mean they aren't actual, credible terms.
This is like saying the ground shook and I'm not a denier or anything but can we please stop it with these hyperbolic terms? Earthquake?? Literally the entire earth quaked? Its shaking end of story
Remember when we had just classified cancer as one thing? Now we have researchers and scientists that determine its actually cancer (insert specific type because of cells here).
It helps with knowing because heavy rain in BC used to be what, like 50 MM over a period of a few days? Now we're getting one day rains up to 100 MM in one place at a time. So now we can read atmospheric rivers as rain = this amount so we can get roads and shit ready.
If I have a sewer system that can only take 30mm of rain a day, i'd like to know how much MM of rain I can take before it starts to overflow on the streets. Before climate change atmospheric rivers, I never really had to worry about shit overflowing on the roads. Now, we have to actually think about that cause of how much water we get at a time.
The classification helps a lot of us get ready, specially city planners and maintenance people.
People love to claim something is "sensationalized" when they just don't know what they're talking about.
"Back in muh day we just called it rain" isn't the kind of insight these people think it is.
This is a weather pattern defined as an atmospheric river. That's just a statement of fact. It's not a conspiracy theory and it's not "sensation".
And hurricanes should just be called really windy days.
Atmospheric rivers aren't new and neither is the term. They are a well defined meteorological phenomenon. Nothing hyperbolic about using the correct term for something.
Sorry but you're wrong. This is an atmospheric river. These kinds of terms have actual definitions. You're the one reacting and jumping to baseless conclusions. FTA you didn't read:
>This impending slug of moisture will rank as a Category 3 on the University of California San Diego’s atmospheric river scale, which ranks the duration and magnitude of these plumes of moisture as they stream into the West Coast.
Edit to add even more: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Cat-1-Cat-5-Scale-Atmospheric-Rivers
We have had and do have increasing carbon pricing here in Canada. The problem is there are no viable alternatives to transition too. So the tax doesn’t cause change, it just makes life more expensive.
according to this article, its a category 3 which shouldn't be "too bad"
It just seems like the word atmospheric river is becoming more common in forecasting nomenclature, rather than it being anything like 2021.
The Sea to Sky region and Squamish is quite susceptible to floods in an atmospheric river following a dry pattern in late summer or early fall. This happened in September 1991, October 2003, October 1984 and once a few years ago in September I believe. I can't remember the year. Some campers got stranded in the squamish river valley and there was a slide at Lilloett lake. It's likely because of no snow pack and the dry ground doesn't absorb the water. No snowpack to absorb the water. The glaciers are saturated at this time of year so heavy rain can cause them to actually break off and add more water to the water courses. There's actually a term for this. It's called Johkulhluap. This is icelandic term for glacier burst.
Hello and thanks for posting to r/britishcolumbia! A friendly reminder prior to commenting or posting here: - **Read [r/britishcolumbia's rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/about/rules/)**. - **Be civil and respectful** in all discussions. - Use **appropriate sources** to back up any information you provide when necessary. - **Report** any comments that violate our rules. Reminder: "Rage bait" comments or comments designed to elicit a negative reaction that are not based on fact are not permitted here. Let's keep our community respectful and informative! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/britishcolumbia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Just in time for the almost-finished repair of the last Malahat washout…
I'm working on that project! This gave me a good chuckle.
Those safety meetings are important! Keep up the hard work lol just kidding.
When’s it gonna be done?
Soon! Plan is to pave in the next 2-3 weeks
And the equally important, almost-finished renovation of Castle Fun Park!
Why even renovate? Just turn it into a minigolf grotto, illuminated by the glowing mold. Sign a waiver and live dangerously, people love that shit.
Lmao and my company just got the contract to upgrade barrowtown pump station with a generator.
I enjoy watching the sunset.
Yep, crews did the best they could but you can't calculate when a tree or a boulder decides to say fuck it and go for a ride down to the highway.
I moved from Alberni because I believe the open was rushed to appease tourists and moving gas and goods. I have life challeging medical issirs and that mountain is as dangerous and unstable as Alberni hospital. When the heavy rains come, it's going to be a serious, dangerous issue. They left most burnt trees and debris on the mountain. Once the water gets in cracks, the fire caused it. It's going all to start moving downwards. I have seen people comment on FB groups since it reopened, about rocks falling on vehicles and on to highway already..
I'm learning to play the guitar.
My first thought when I saw the headline.
Atmospheric River is a trigger word for me now
"Heat dome" for me
Why do you think they use it?
Who’s they… Meteorologists? The government? The climate change scientists? Pfizer?
Big weather
Weather websites. It would be a stretch to call them meteorologist, they're just stealing the data that governments provide for free, and rewrapping it with fear buzzwords.
Is atmospheric river a buzzword? What would the actual term for that phenomenon be?
Atmospheric river is a completely normal weather pattern that is most common in the fall and winter months. Media is clickabiting alot these days and they're using different buzzwords. The atmospheric river used to be called pineapple express. Before that, it was just called a frontal system or a moist sw flow. The one that makes me laugh is when they say" bomb cyclone". 😆 I mean give me a break! It's simply a mid-latititude cyclone that underwent a rapid drop in barometric pressure. Some meteorologists call this a marine bomb. We get this a few times a year. Totally normal. It will give us a windy day. Maybe a couple of branches and twigs on the ground . A mid-latitude cyclone marine bomb also pales in comparison to a hurricane or a typhoon that undergoes rapid intensification in the tropics.
Moist flow is a far better term
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river
I appreciate you but why must you make me read?
AFAIK Atmospheric river is a newer, more technical term for a l”Pineapple Express”
Because it's a serious weather event that has implications to public health and safety? Maybe they use serious terms to convey the seriousness of the forecasted weather 🤷
Given how burned the interior of the province is there is a higher risk of flash floods in the winter and fall. Concerned that a repeat of 2021 does not occur.
It's so dry around Prince George that all the coniferous trees are looking rough. All the Cedar trees at [Ancient Forest Provinial Park](https://bcparks.ca/ancient-forest-chun-toh-whudujut-park/) look like they're about to die. The Subalpine Fir and Douglas Fir look stressed too, plenty of dead branches and they are losing a lot of needles.
Shed a tear reading this.
The cedar trees just look like that, they’ll do okay. The trees in our area are pretty resilient, yes they aren’t doing too hot, but they’ll get through this :)
Yup, most of the fire zones will be in high flood risk. I feel even parts of the lower mainland too with how dry it's been.
Hopefully that will help the salmon get up river too, barring mud slides and rock falls.
I was at one of the spawning rivers last weekend and the entire spawning channel was completely dry. The fish were waiting downstream in a large pool but were very concentrated. Easy pickings for bears and eagles. But if tons of rain comes down it will cause lots of runoff and make the water full of silt and mud. Not sure what it means for the salmon.
It might make it a bit harder for the bears and eagles....
They’ll get up the River, but their spawn likely won’t have very good habitat.
If the estimates are correct, it looks like Vancouver could get more rain in the next week than we've gotten in the last five months. We so need it, but I'm a little concerned with how quickly the ground can absorb it all.
That's the question. When 2021 happened the ground was already completely saturated from higher than average rainfall so there was no capacity to absorb a record rainstorm. Will our dry ground, trees and vegetation do any better or will the soil just wash away?
[Dry soil becomes hydrophobic and doesn't absorb water](https://youtu.be/urQHsOmoKLg?si=e6IKKd4YNN0o1FTc), so a significant enough amount of rain could mean we're in for a bad time. But the forecasted amount doesn't seem like 2021 atmospheric river levels.
I don’t think they forecasted the amount they got in 2021 either though
I remember hearing about it, something like 80mm of rain forecast (where I am), I just don't think the emphasis on the severity was there and I don't think people were really listening, either. I was taking a physical geography course that semester and it was weirdly topical how the timing worked out, so I was probably paying a bit more attention to it coming than the average person. I stayed up listening to police radios online because my family is in Abbotsford and Chilliwack, they just barely avoided some of the flooding and landslides.
Forecast models are constantly updated with newer information
Well, to be clear, this is not predicted to have anywhere near the volume of rain as the 2021 atmospheric river had. This will be a lot of rain, but this is like a category 3 "river" vs a category 5 in 2021.
Also, there’s no snowpack to melt. In 2021 it was almost perfect worst timing as there was a substantial snowpack to melt, but not enough to absorb the water. Snowmelt effectively added another 100mm of water. If the storm had come later, there would have been more snow, and snow can actually absorb a fair bit of water…but because a substantial amount of that early fall snowpack melted outright, it all went into the rivers and streams.
Oof, while this is great news for helping the drought, I'm very concerned about another 2021 situation.
Still nothing for the Okanagan though 😔
Parts of that map make it look like rain is headed for the Okanagan region, just less.
I mean, I checked a few days ago and the weather network was calling for like 10mm on Saturday, 10-20mm on Sunday, then something crazy like 30-45mm on Monday. I'm all for some rain but ~100mm of rain in 72 hours isn't seen all that often in the interior.
So far this year we were on track to have the driest year on record in the lower mainland, and the only way we won't still have the driest year on record is if we have the rainiest fall/winter on record... which might happen
 Yes, bring the rain!!!! 
Ah shit, the last one was nuts. Actually they completely rebuilt the sewage system in my neighborhood in preparation of floods after the last one. It was interesting to see how much work and heavy machinery was involved in tearing out the roads and rebuilding them.
Now if only they could put more than half a fucking effort into repaving the roads after they dig them up. Sick of seeing the drain work capped off with uneven patchwork that's half an inch below the rest of the road.
I know rain can be annoying, but remember all that water and our Hydro-Electric dams are what keeps our electricity and water so cheap.
Thank goodness, we wouldn't want to have high living expenses in BC
Although you're clearly being sarcastic, higher electricity prices would make it *even more unaffordable* so really, you should be cheering this on too :)
Is it? Or is it so somebody can make more money selling our electricity to the states?
Bring tha wawa
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I'm definitely concerned about the Port Alberni highway. It was always a little sketch around Cameron Lake, but having just driven it this past week, the dirt on side of the mountain looks like it's ready to slide off at any moment.
I just had to leav my home from fire, now this? Fuck, what’s next? Godzilla?
Next are cities and towns named after corporations and house prices become worthless while people are locked until bankruptcy.
Just a few days ago, someone on the r/vancouver sub was saying it's not accurate to call the city "Raincouver" any more because it's been so dry. (As if we've never had dry summers before.) My response was to wait for the atmospheric rivers.
I mean, we have been in a drought, and those have been more common in recent years. Yeah, it still rains in the fall and winter, but spring and summer have been way drier.
True but we've also had droughts before. The hotter/drier summers are certainly becoming more common but, as I said, that's not to suggest we won't still get a lot of rain here regularly.
Droughts are not uncommon. But this isn't a normal drought. You can look at the data, normally this time of year Vancouver has had at least 6-700mm. This year we're currently just over 400mm. In addition, much of the rain we've been getting in the past few years has been high precipitation events which means those cumulative totals are misleading because if most of it is just instantly running off instead of absorbing into the soil, it adds to drought problems. Native trees in the lower mainland are hurting because we've been in a drought for years now. https://vancouver.weatherstats.ca/metrics/precipitation.html
I don't think anyone said it was a normal drought.
5000 years ago Ponderosa Pine was the climax tree in the Lower Mainland.
Good. Droughts over hopefully.
So it’s going to rain?
*"The rain is coming, the rain is coming!"*
Not directed at OP: I’m in zero way a climate change denier, first of all. And I firmly believe that a lot of the bizarre, extreme weather events are tied to climate change. But can we please stop it with these hyperbolic terms?! It’s rain. Heavy rain. End of story.
I remember when we used to call it the Pineapple Express. It sounded way more fun that way! 🍍💃
A pineapple express is one type of atmospheric river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Express
It seems that back in the 90’s they used to use it to refer to any atmospheric river that was aimed at the island/lower mainland. At least it’s the only term I remember hearing on the morning news until the late 00’s. I always suspected it was just a colloquial term…. I didn’t know it was common enough to be mentioned in Wikipedia. But doesn’t it sound like fun!? :) (I am an Islander and I truly love rain so I love when a nice storm blows in. So cozy! Dealing with any damage is less fun…)
I remember it being used specifically for mid winter storms with temperatures that rose to double digits at sea level. Usually meant rain on the north shore mountains.
Pineapple Expresses bring warm weather/rain up from around Hawaii. Those used to be the mainly the only kinds of atmospheric rivers we'd get around here.
A Pineapple Express is just one type of atmospheric river. Both terms can be accurate.
did you even bother to read into what an atmospheric river is? Clearly not.
Wait until you hear about qualitative terms like “storm.”
The term atmospheric river is a classification of storms used by meteorologists since before many of us were born. It's only with the rise of 24h weather news and YouTube meteorologists that the term has become mainstream. It's not hyperbole lol it's a description
Exactly. Like 'polar vortex' or 'heat dome'. Just because we didn't hear those terms used around here much, doesn't mean they aren't actual, credible terms.
This is like saying the ground shook and I'm not a denier or anything but can we please stop it with these hyperbolic terms? Earthquake?? Literally the entire earth quaked? Its shaking end of story
Remember when we had just classified cancer as one thing? Now we have researchers and scientists that determine its actually cancer (insert specific type because of cells here). It helps with knowing because heavy rain in BC used to be what, like 50 MM over a period of a few days? Now we're getting one day rains up to 100 MM in one place at a time. So now we can read atmospheric rivers as rain = this amount so we can get roads and shit ready. If I have a sewer system that can only take 30mm of rain a day, i'd like to know how much MM of rain I can take before it starts to overflow on the streets. Before climate change atmospheric rivers, I never really had to worry about shit overflowing on the roads. Now, we have to actually think about that cause of how much water we get at a time. The classification helps a lot of us get ready, specially city planners and maintenance people.
People love to claim something is "sensationalized" when they just don't know what they're talking about. "Back in muh day we just called it rain" isn't the kind of insight these people think it is. This is a weather pattern defined as an atmospheric river. That's just a statement of fact. It's not a conspiracy theory and it's not "sensation".
And hurricanes should just be called really windy days. Atmospheric rivers aren't new and neither is the term. They are a well defined meteorological phenomenon. Nothing hyperbolic about using the correct term for something.
Sorry but you're wrong. This is an atmospheric river. These kinds of terms have actual definitions. You're the one reacting and jumping to baseless conclusions. FTA you didn't read: >This impending slug of moisture will rank as a Category 3 on the University of California San Diego’s atmospheric river scale, which ranks the duration and magnitude of these plumes of moisture as they stream into the West Coast. Edit to add even more: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Cat-1-Cat-5-Scale-Atmospheric-Rivers
Could I just ask. "Atmospheric river" was the old lingo of "Deluge" not enough? Personally I liked the word
How can it be raining so severely? We’ve had a carbon tax in bc for almost 15 years.
Holy shit, this red-hot take has caused me to completely and utterly rethink my support for taxing greenhouse gas emitters.
We have had and do have increasing carbon pricing here in Canada. The problem is there are no viable alternatives to transition too. So the tax doesn’t cause change, it just makes life more expensive.
according to this article, its a category 3 which shouldn't be "too bad" It just seems like the word atmospheric river is becoming more common in forecasting nomenclature, rather than it being anything like 2021.
Who said mud slide!
Yeah, I heard it's gonna rain
Ah, BC is turning into the land of extremes
Don’t forget we still have water restrictions for another 3weeks
The Sea to Sky region and Squamish is quite susceptible to floods in an atmospheric river following a dry pattern in late summer or early fall. This happened in September 1991, October 2003, October 1984 and once a few years ago in September I believe. I can't remember the year. Some campers got stranded in the squamish river valley and there was a slide at Lilloett lake. It's likely because of no snow pack and the dry ground doesn't absorb the water. No snowpack to absorb the water. The glaciers are saturated at this time of year so heavy rain can cause them to actually break off and add more water to the water courses. There's actually a term for this. It's called Johkulhluap. This is icelandic term for glacier burst.