Fire, floods, and heat: Alberta saw record-setting weather events in 2023

This story is part of the Prairies Climate Change Project, a joint initiative between CBC Edmonton and CBC Saskatchewan that focuses on weather and our changing climate.

Albertans witnessed a year of extreme, record-setting climate events in 2023 — from heat, to unrelenting drought, to floods — and experts say climate change was one of the leading factors.

While the data is not yet available to confirm that Alberta experienced the hottest year on record, there were a few months that have set new records, including May. 

"There was a record extremes observed in May when Alberta saw an event that was probably something like a one-in-50 or a one-in-100 year event," said Nathan Gillett, research scientist with Environment Canada. 

"There were extreme heat waves observed [that month] and those were made more likely by human-induced climate change." 

Those warmer temperatures resulted in dry conditions, which fuelled wildfires that would burn across hundreds of thousands of hectares. 

"When you're looking at how much is on the ground, how much moisture is on the ground, if you get your temperatures shooting up and staying in the high 20s, in the high 30s, you get drier," said Alysa Pederson, warning preparedness meteorologist for Alberta with Environment Climate Change Canada.

"It's a lot easier for fires to start when our temperatures are so high and so it dries out the ground … which is [a] tinderbox in the spring." 

By the first week of May, 108 active fires were recorded in Alberta, ripping through towns, national parks, and Indigenous communities. 

A provincial state of emergency was announced May 6 and with 2,214,957 hectares burned, the 2023 wildfire season smashed the previous Alberta record from 2019 when 883,411 hectares burned. 

Smoke hours

Where there is smoke, there is fire. One metric that Environment Canada measures as smoke hours, an hour in which visibility is 9.7 kilometres or less. 

According to Environment Canada, many parts of the province reported record levels of smoke hours. In Edmonton, 299 smoke hours were recorded, up from the previous record of 229 in 2018.

Calgary reported 512 smoke hours — up from the previous record of 450 smoke hours set in 2018. 

The largest jump in smoke hours reported was in Peace River, with 743 smoke hours, up from 192 smoke hours in 2018. 

Gillett says the link between wildfires and climate change can't be overstated. 

"Human-induced climate change increases the risk of wildfires … by drying out forests more quickly, making wildfires more likely and making them tend to spread longer and burn for a longer season," said Gillett. 

From fires to rain 

As wildfires burned across Alberta, the province saw a deluge of rain hit northwestern Alberta near the end of June. 

On June 19, the town of Edson declared a state of local emergency after being hit by 135 mm of rain. Whitecourt didn't see quite as much rain, but still faced enough declare a state of emergency the next day. 

"There was a combination of I think it was four or five inches in the McLeod River Valley which is south of us, and then an additional 3.5 inches of rain in the Athabasca River Valley in just a few short days," said Tom Pickard, mayor of Whitecourt. 

Due to rising water, the community evacuated a nearby RV park, mobile home park, a golf course, and large festival park. 

But Pickard says since that in recent months, the community has seen very little precipitation. 

"We're hoping for rain, we've had such a dry fall it almost seems like that [storm] was the last rain we had, or last significant rain we had," said Pickard. 

"I know that everyone in this part of Alberta is really concerned about the potential for fires for next year because of the lack of rain."

Gillett says that lack of precipitation, and brief, extreme rainfall events can both be attributed to climate change.

"Human-induced climate change does also increase the intensity of the heaviest rainfall events, that's something that we expect based on climate models," said Gillett. 

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, this year's flooding in Alberta caused more than $40 million in insured damage. 

Pickard says Whitecourt needs about $2.6 million to fix culverts, river spurs, roads, and other infrastructure, and to clean up the community. 

Alberta's first powerful tornado in over 30 years

The spring storms near the end of June turned out to be the perfect recipe for tornadoes, with 10 tornadoes making their way through southeastern Alberta on June 14. 

For the first time in more than 30 years, the province saw a category EF4 tornado, which ripped through Didsbury on Canada Day. 

The last time the province had a tornado of that magnitude was in 1987, a tore through parts of eastern Edmonton, killing 27 people and leaving more than 300 others injured. Edmontonians remember the event as Black Friday.

"Where it's colder aloft and warm at the surface to get a pretty strong thunderstorm called the supercell … and when those storms form, they're the most common to get a tornado of that kind of strength," said Pederson. 

What does the future hold? 

While it's hard to predict the long-term forecast, Gillet says that Albertans can expect to see winters become drier and warmer, and for summer temperatures to continue to climb. 

"The most direct impacts are the rising temperatures themselves, more hot extremes. We can expect shorter snow cover seasons," said Gillett. 

"We see glaciers in the mountains of Canada melting and shorter snow cover duration and then that's going to lead to less water in the rivers in summer … earlier peak spring runoff and then less water in the summer, so that can have impacts on water resources." 

That reduction in water, Gillett says, could trigger wildfires, and put industries reliant on water — including agriculture — at risk.