Wednesday, November 17, 2021



BC has been hit by an atmospheric river which destroyed or closed all of the highways in and out of Vancouver.  These are roads we have driven on many times.  The Coquihalla is the highway we always take when driving to the coast;  pieces of it are missing, not covered with mud, missing.  That highway took eight years to build and traces through the Cascade Mountains.  At it's summit, it is 1,444 m above sea level and can be a treacherous drive.  I've driven it in July and it was snowing at the summit.  We drove through an awful snowstorm there in early May one year.  Most importantly, it's a major trucking route and a huge part of the supply chain in Western Canada.  The town of Merritt, a major hub on the Coquihalla, is completely underwater and most of the population have been evacuated.



 



 


This is the Trans Canada Highway in Abbotsford.  Again a highway we drive regularly.  The highway sits in the valley and is completly covered by water.  This is the main highway in and out of Vancouver from the East.  All the goods that travel by truck from Vancouver to Alberta and from Alberta to Vancouver use this route.  Life just got harder for everyone in the West.


I've been listening to the radio this morning and it's overwhelming.  I want to smack climate change deniers on the head and yell, "Snap out of it!"


All images have been taken from the internet.

13 comments:

  1. That is some horrible damage. We do not live in the same world we would have been living in a hundred years ago. Or even fifty.

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  2. What happened at Abbotsford will take some repairing and of course they will want to fix it in a way that will diminish the possibility of similar destruction in the future. Abbotsford is so close to Vancouver.

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  3. I heard this morning that Seattle, WA is having similar water problems! They always get a lot of rain, but flooding is not normal there!
    Climate deniers and Covid deniers are idiots that will probably never be educated ... 🤬

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  4. I just emailed you about this very thing. I hadn't seen all these photos though and they are sobering indeed. Seattle is fine as far as I know, but north of there in Skagit Valley, it's a mess. Lots of flooding.

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  5. Horrible. I'm worried about friends in Abbotsford - they seem ok but what's coming re food supplies? Fingers crossed. - Kate

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  6. What a shock to see the Trans Canada Highway under water. We've had floods in this part of the country before but nothing like this.

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  7. I don't know how anyone can deny climate change at this point.........

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  8. This is sobering. How on earth do necessary supplies make their way in to the flooded areas.

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  9. Oh my, that is just horrendous! I'm so sorry for everyone affected by this (directly and indirectly). That one part of the road being at almost 1,500 metres is high by anybody's standards. I would hate to drive it in the middle of a Canadian winter!

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  10. Yikes. SO many natural disasters and yet, we don't pay attention.

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  11. I saw on twitter today a weather advisory for northern BC that it would start raining today and rain through Monday. Hopefully, they're wrong.

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