Insurance Weather Scare
My insurance company sent me a "newsletter" email trying to get me to purchase more insurance. Fine. I'm not interested. However, what go my attention was this:
According to Environment Canada, over the past sixty years our atmosphere has been getting warmer and wetter. Climate change could bring about another overland flood such as the storm in Burlington last year that saw 190mm of rain fall within hours causing severe damage.
Being someone who likes to check out the facts, I clicked on the "Environment Canada" link and was taken, not the the Environment Canada website as I expected, but to a CBC news page.
The reader will note that the entire article is about tornados, and the sensible advice to be prepare for severe weather.
An F4 tornado is well overdue, says Geoff Coulson, Environment Canada's warning preparedness meteorologist.
That is what the article is about. There is not one mention about "over the past sixty years our atmosphere has been getting warmer and wetter." Is my insurance company unable to read, or do they think I can't?
The headline is completely not what the article is about, but headlines are always written by the editor, not the writer. This is why one should never judge an article or story by the headline. Read it first.
I went to the Environment Canada website to see if I could find where my insurance company is getting its information from. I wasn't able to find the exact data I wanted, but I did find something helpful.
Canada gets more tornadoes than any other country with the exception of the United States.
Read the above Geoff Coulson quote again. What he is saying is he thinks Ontario is statically due for a F4 tornado because it has been a awhile since one occurred. He is not saying severe tornados are on the rise. He could be saying the number of severe tornadoes is below what statistically it should be. There is one slight problem with what Geoff Coulson says. Canada stopped using the Fujita Scale (or F-scale) for tornadoes in 2013. The new EF scale is a little different.
The exact causes of a tornado are not definitely known; however, there are some warning signs to the development of a tornado:
Severe thunderstorms, with frequent thunder and lightning
Environment Canada has been tracking the number of lightning strikes in Canada through Canada's Lightning Detection Network. According to Lightning Maps and Statistics there shows no upward trend in lighting in Canada from 1998 to 2013. More severe storms would likely mean more lightning from these severe storms. In fact, there has been no upward trend in storm related weather disasters as shown by Canadian Stories of Lightning – Historical Events Snapshots.
We had severe weather in the past, we will have severe weather in the future. It is part of living on this planet we can Earth. Get prepared for it. We now have more warnings of severe weather, and ways to survive it, available to us than at any other time in human history. In the past, people experienced severe weather, got through it, and got on with their lives. I think we need to do the same today.
As for my insurance company's newsletters, I deleted the one I recieved, and I unsubscribed from the "newsletter".
© Trevor Dailey
Tornadoes in Canada: Everything you need to know
Video: Day of the Killer Tornadoes (April 3, 1974)