LifeStyle Features

Pineapple express brings stunning amounts of rain to south coast of British Columbia

by Charlie Smith on February 1st, 2020 at 9:33 AM

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      An atmospheric river has caused washouts and floods on parts of Vancouver Island and in the Sea to Sky corridor and the Lower Mainland.

      Hundreds of skiers and snowboarders had to remain at the Sasquatch Mountain Resort overnight after a landslide halted traffic on Hemlock Valley Road.

      The resort is serving breakfast in the cafeteria and will open Molly's Pub at 11 a.m.

      "As much as we would like to open the mountain for the many families and individuals currently on the mountain and those wanting to come up, without access to emergency services in the case of an incident, we are left with no choice but to suspend all activities on hill until the road is back open," the company wrote on its Facebook page.

      That wasn't the only weather-related problem last night, as the tweet below indicates.

      In the City of Port Coquitlam, officials opened an emergency social services centre at the Hyde Creek Recreation Centre for those residents displaced by flooding.

      In Maple Ridge, the road is closed on 112 Avenue east of 240 Street due to a slide caused by the intense rainfall.

      The Cowichan Valley Regional District has declared a state of local emergency after flooding led to the evacuation of about 23 people in Crofton.

      And about 15,000 B.C. Hydro customers are without power in the Chilliwack area.

      On Vancouver Island, a washout four kilometres north of Duncan has prevented people from travelling on Highway 1 to Chemainus.

      Highway 1 is also blocked in both directions due to flooding at the McKenzie Avenue exit in Saanich and in both directions for an 87.5-kilometre stretch between Lytton and Yale.

      Between Thursday (January 30) afternoon and Saturday (February 1) at 4 a.m., 138 millimetres of rain fell on Pitt Meadows and 140 millimetres fell on Port Mellon, according to Environment Canada. The UBC Research weather station recorded 137 millimetres over the same period.

      But that amount was dwarfed by the 371 millimetres that fell on Effingham on western Vancouver Island. Kennedy Lake in the same area was drenched with 172 millimetres.

      Other areas that posted more than 100 millimetres of rain from Thursday afternoon until Saturday morning were Squamish (166) Abbotsford (119), Hope (117), and Brandywine (107).

      Environment Canada cautions that these are preliminary figures and are not considered official.

      Avalanche Canada has tweeted that several large avalanches have occurred in the Coast Mountains and the Rockies as a result of the recent storm and rising temperatures.

      "If you travel in the backcountry during or immediately after the storm, we recommend staying well away from large avalanche paths, avoiding avalanche terrain, and sticking to forested or low-angle terrain," it tweeted.

      The higher rainfall and higher temperatures during this pineapple express on the south coast of B.C. are consistent with what climate-change experts have been forecasting in this region with the continued accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

      Metro Vancouver's climate projections call for a "large increase in rainfall during fall and winter" by 2050.

      Below, you can see more images of the impact of the storm.

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