After a summer of near-record drought across B.C., flood risk will follow

Near-record drought conditions across the province created the conditions for B.C.’s worst wildfire season on record, but winter rains may not be the replenishing relief that regions are hoping for.

“It depends on when they come,” said UBC hydrologist John Richardson. “If we get sort of gentle rains for a few weeks, that will reduce some of the risks, but there’s nothing that can really guard us against a storm like we had in November, 2021.”

And climate change stacks the deck in favour of the likelihood for atmospheric-river events to occur, said Richardson, a professor of forest and conservation science at UBC’s faculty of forestry.

“There’s a lot more temperature accumulating in places in oceans, which produce these more intense storms,” Richardson said. “And it’s a storm’s intensity, not the total amount of rainfall, that will be most important.”