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#LionsBay, #B.C., #Canada, #LowerMainland, #cornice, #AlastairFerries, #MartinColwell, #AvalancheCanada, #KarlKlassenMay The bodies of five hikers, believed to have fallen hundreds of metres to their deaths near Lions Bay, B.C., north of Vancouver, have been recovered by search and rescue crews, media reports said. 'They fell down the north face of Mount Harvey,' said rescuer, CBCNews reports said.  Mount Harvey in B.C.: Wikipedia Dozens of search and rescue workers from organizations across the Lower Mainland spent Sunday morning scouring the mountain, including avalanche dogs and helicopter crews. "They were kind of going parallel to the ridge. They were back but I could see where their tracks where the snow had caved away… On Mount Harvey, I think a really large cornice can develop sticking out quite far, so you have to stay quite far back away from the edge and that's not obvious," said Hiker Alastair Ferries who was on the trail Saturday, CBCNews reports said. Ferries said on Saturday visibility was limited and varied, and there was intermittent snow. A post on he facebook account of Ferries by Grejeen News Canada read, “Solo hiker Alastair Ferries knew the situation was grim when he reached the summit of Mount Harvey, north of Vancouver, Saturday afternoon. The tracks belonging to a group of snowshoers he’d been following had simply vanished “over the side.” “There was nobody there,” he told the National Post. Sunday afternoon, search and rescue personnel confirmed everyone’s worst fears.” Karl Klassen, the warning service manager with Avalanche Canada said cornices are common at this time of year when there is high wind, warm temperatures and sticky snow. A post on a popular hiking website, a week before, had warned people of the imminent danger of breaking of the cornice at the top of the mountain. But Lions Bay Search and Rescue manager Martin Colwell said cornices were not easy to see when hikers are on top of one. Colwell said the five victims were from B.C.'s Lower Mainland and were part of a regular hiking group. Police or the BC Coroners Service have not yet identified the victims. Avalanche Canada recommended people wanting to explore the backcountry take avalanche training, which provides instruction on recognizing dangers posed by cornices.  Avalanche Canada: Facebook page Klassen said, "You know just because it's warm and green in the valley bottom doesn't mean it's over in the mountains," he said. "We still have a pretty wintry snowpack up ... in the mountains," CBCNews reports said. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
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#Ontario, #Canada, #FlightsCancelled, #PearsonInternationalAirport, #traveladvisory, #WeatherAgency, #StrongGustyWinds Toronto, Apr 7 (Canadian-Media): Cancellation of over 500 flights in and out of Pearson International Airport, Toronto had resulted due to heavy snow storm in parts of southern Ontario and northeastern U.S., media reports said. Out of the total 500 cancelled flights, 260 flights were scheduled to leave Toronto around noon, and more than 240 cancelled flights were arrivals, thestar News reports said.  Winter storm in Canada: Wikipedia Airline at the Pearson airport had been notifying people in advance about delays and cancellations due to bad weather, said Air Canada ticketing counter at Terminal 1. Airlines had also been urging travellers to check the website, ‘Pearson issued a travel advisory’ for the status of their flights. Toronto and GTA were under a special weather advisory Tuesday morning. Hamilton, Oakville and Burlington had been under a winter storm warning and about 20 to 30 centimetres of snow fell Monday night in these areas. Winter storm warning is still in effect for Niagara region.The weather agency reported prevalence of messy travelling conditions due to strong and gusty winds. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj)  #Iceberg, #NorthAtlantic, #Grand Banks of Newfoundland, #Titanic, #SidHynes, #Canada, #Trans- AtlanticVessels, #GabrielleMcGrath, #International IcePatrol Over the past week more than 400 icebergs had drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes which slowed down the vessels to a mere crawling or forced their detours of hundreds of miles, media reports said. These numbers were unusually large seen only during late May or early June, average for this time of year being about 80, CBCNews reports said. The number of icebergs had spiked earlier this week from 37 to about 450 near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, according to the U.S. Coast Guard's International Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut, CBCNews reports said. Experts attributed this phenomenon to global warming and blowing of strong winds in the counter-clockwise direction that caused breaking off chunks of the Greenland ice sheet and float away. The icebergs In the waters close to where the Titanic went down in 1912, had been forcing ships to take precautions. Trans-Atlantic vessels were forced to detour, instead of cutting straight across the ocean, that had been adding around 640 kilometres to the trip equal to a day and a half of added travel time for many large cargo ships. Cargo ships owned by Oceanex near the Newfoundland coast, had to throt way back to 3 or 4 knots to get to their homeport in St. John's, which had added up to a day to the trip, said executive chairman, Capt. Sid Hynes. He said One ship was pulled out of service for repairs after hitting a chunk of ice and added all these made everything so expensive. Coast Guard Cmdr. Gabrielle McGrath, who leads the ice patrol, said it was for the first time that she had seen such a drastic increase in such a short time and predicted a fourth consecutive extreme ice season with more than 600 icebergs in the shipping lanes. In 2014, there were 1,546 icebergs in the shipping lanes, the sixth most severe season on record since 1900, according to the patrol. There were 1,165 icebergs in 2015 and 687 in 2016. The International Ice Patrol was formed after the sinking of the Titanic to monitor iceberg danger in the North Atlantic and warn ships. It conducts inspection of flights that are used to produce charts. In 104 years, according to the ice patrol, no ships that were warned had struck an iceberg. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj) Image of iceberg: Wikipedia #PowerOutages, #Ontario, #Canada, #HydroOne, #OntarioProvincialPolice, #OPP, #Dufferin-Peel, #Caledon, #DufferinCounty, #GTA, #Kerry Schmidt Toronto, Apr 7 (Canadian-Media): A series of power outages across southern and eastern Ontario were caused this morning due to heavy snow and high winds, media reports said. Hydro One tweeted that a total of 207 outages are affecting almost 45,000 customers and that they were responding to these in south and central Ontario, CBCNews reports said.  Power outages in Ontario Caledonia near Hamilton and just north of Stouffville had Orillia had also experienced active outages. Dufferin-Peel Catholic District and Peel District school board in Caledon and Dufferin County had cancelled their school buses. Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) had been asking commuters to give themselves enough for this morning's commute as they had been dealing with multiple crashes on icy roads north of the city, CBC Toronto's overnight video-producer Tony Smyth reports said. OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt had reported blowing snow and windy conditions on some GTA highways and said 20 C of snow was in the forecast for Monday adding that drivers should be prepared for winter driving conditions. "You've got to deal with what we're having," he told CBC Toronto. "You don't want to be the one that ends up in the ditch and has their day spoiled”. The city had been laying down salt to prepare for wet snow. Hydro One customers had been advised to check their outage map for the latest updates. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj)  #Biodiversity, #ecosystems, #TeroMustonen, #KaisuMustonen, #SockeyeSalmon, #BritishColumbia, #Canada, #ClimateChange, #Snowchange A new all-inclusive study named “Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being”, published Friday in Science, showed some species moving to cooler areas of the planet to survive the climate change, media reports said. The study pointed out that addressing climate change should go hand in hand with the effects of biodiversity redistribution but unfortunately this is not being incorporated in most adaptation strategies. Authors of the study, Tero Mustonen and Kaisu Mustonen, published on March 31, 2017 in Science said that the geography of life being shifted due to climate change will directly effect the work of the human beings causing the disruption of the ecological structure of the planet. Sockeye salmon are just one species that is being impacted by warming ocean water and more acidic conditions caused by climate change and they need to stay in cool water in order to survive. "We will enter a century of unprecedented change," said Mustonen who is from Finland, works for an Arctic NGO called Snowchange, and has also spent two decades researching in British Columbia said that due to the shortage of time policy makers of climate change needed to be more careful in making decisions. For the last 25,000 years, said Mustonen, it is the biggest change in species which will have profound consequences for British Columbia where province's iconic salmon is already being affected by warmer ocean temperatures. According to the report, this is happening all across the planet and the, "shifts will leave winners and losers in their wake, radically reshaping the pattern of human well-being between regions and different sectors and potentially leading to substantial conflict." The study and its authors hoped to convince policy makers to include the well-being of species as they try to manage climate change. Mustonen’s research findings about the traditional knowledge of First Nation and how it could contribute towards halting climate change made him optimistic. He also urged the average citizen to work within their own communities to help restore and maintain watersheds. "The endemic species of this place, for example the Fraser [River] catchment area, salmon and all the other species, here could have more resilience when there's more natural habitat or restored habitat," said Mustonen. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj) Image of Sockeye salmon: Wikipedia EnvironmentCanada, #TerraNova, #Newfoundland&Labrador, #GreenBay-WhiteBay, #Gander; #Canada Toronto, Apr 3 (Canadian-Media): According to Environment Canada the weather system due to hit the island of Newfoundland & Labrador (NL) on Monday had got worse, media reports said. Blizzard warnings had been issued by Environment Canada for almost the entire NL, with gusty northerly winds 80 km/h in most areas and 100 km/h along the coast, and reduced visibility due to heavy snowfall, CBCNews reports said.  Environment Canada. Environment Canada said the northeasterly winds will keep the pack ice along northeast-facing coastlines with consequent increase of the building of ice pressure with the increase of winds. Wind gusts are expected throughout most of the island with varying amounts of snowfall expected. There is a strong possibility 20 to 35 centimetres of snow in Terra Nova, Gander and the Green Bay-White Bay areas by Monday evening, Environment Canada’s reports said. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj) |
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