A forest fire destroyed 90% of the Canadian town of Lytton, where in recent days record temperatures were recorded – 49.6 ° C. Mayor Jan Polderman says the fire took literally 15 minutes to do this.
BBC News quoted Mayor Lytton as saying, “People just grabbed their pets, their keys, got into their cars and drove away.” According to some reports, the fire could move at a speed of 10-20 km / h. It also caused significant damage to British Columbia’s hydroelectric power plants.
Abnormal heat has been holding in the western province of Canada for a week, 486 people have become its victims in 5 days. Lytton is located 260 km from Vancouver. About 250 people lived there. In the town, the highest temperature in the country was recorded in the entire history of observations – 49.6 ° C. This was announced by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Provincial Governor John Horgan, speaking at a press conference, said: “We are experiencing the hottest week in British Columbia.” The Ministry of the Environment urges citizens to be careful and warns that “a persistent and dangerous historic heatwave will continue this week.” Experts recommend not to go outside unnecessarily, choose the coolest place at home, cool the body with cold compresses.
The “heat dome” effect, with which experts associate the current weather anomaly, is an unusual phenomenon that is usually extremely rare. According to experts, “on average, only once every several thousand years.” However, climate change “made these kinds of unusual occurrences more likely.”
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