1 Year After $6 Billion Alberta Flood, Saskatchewan Flooding Damages At $1 Billion And Climbing

[hatrack]

Smith Creek in southeastern Saskatchewan normally runs dry in July. Last week it hit an all-time high and the stream gauge that scientists have been monitoring for decades is now under water. So are countless homes and farms in Saskatchewan and Manitoba where the province has declared a state of emergency and called in the military to help deal with the stunning summer flood.

“It’s utterly unprecedented,” says John Pomeroy, director of the centre for hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan. While as horrified as anyone by the flooding he is perhaps not quite as surprised.

It fits with a “regime shift” in the climate system that is bringing more prolonged summer storms to the Prairies, says Pomeroy. Combine that with what he describes as Canada’s woeful flood forecasting and management systems and the result is costly disaster. It is too early to tally the damage of the flood unfolding in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but the cost is expected to be well over a billion dollars as farmers lose crops and communities mop up.

The flood comes just weeks after waters rose in southern Alberta, flooding several communities there, and just a year after flood waters tore through Calgary causing what’s been described as the country’s costliest natural disaster, with more than $6 billion in damage.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/news/Changing+climate+root+utterly+unprecedented+summer+flood/10008801/story.html

[AuntPatsy]

1. That is so horrifying... Those poor people I cannot even imagine ...