Image: BC Govt / Flickr / November 2021 flooding through the Fraser Valley

By Doug Collins

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: Why aren’t we ready for the next atmospheric river event

Nov 20, 2022 | 6:00 AM

ALTHOUGH THE TERM has been around since the 1990’s, I hadn’t heard the term “atmospheric river” very often. It’s nothing new, but has been described as the Pineapple Express, and other less scary terms than “atmospheric river “.

In a nutshell, there are thin lines in the atmosphere which contain much of the rainfall that falls each year. They are called rivers because that’s kind of what they look like from space. There are less than a handful of these rivers around at any one time, but they can be thousands of kilometres in length.

If conditions are right, they drop some of that moisture on land. The west coast of North America is particularly susceptible. Every once in a while, the amount of precipitation reaches the critical level, leading to long and heavy rainfall.

The past few tears, as the earth warms, climate change has increased the risk of damaging rain, leading to flooding such as we had in B.C. last fall. Billions of dollars in damage in the Fraser Valley and Southern Interior.

These rivers are expected to increase in frequency and intensity over the next few years. And so the obvious question “why hasn’t anything been done to prepare for the next one? Farmers around Chilliwack and Abbotsford say they don’t have much idea what will happen to mitigate damage if another disaster hits.

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Same with flood-prone areas like Merritt and the Similkameen. The government has thrown a little money in the pot, but unless there’s a plan, these are simply wasted dollars meant only to give the government some time to come up with more mumbo-jumbo that will help no one.

A year after this major flooding there is still no plan in place. That is unacceptable, especially since we have known of these concerns for years.

Let’s hope our new Premier has this issue near the top of his priority list.

Let’s not let it drop out of sight on the list because the next big deluge, and there will be more, could be worse.

I’m Doug Collins and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.