Just months after the country sweltered under a historic global heat dome in the summer, a region in western Canada has set a new record-high winter temperature, raising global anxiety about climate change.
On Wednesday, Penticton, a city in central British Columbia, hit a high of 72.5 degrees Fahrenheit (22.5 degrees Celsius).
“To be extremely accurate,” Environment Canada meteorologist Armel Castellan told AFP, “it is a record, or it equals a record.”
Winter temperatures in Canada had previously reached 72.5 degrees on December 3, 1982, in Hamilton, Ontario, according to Castellan. A few hundred kilometers southeast of Lytton is Penticton.
Lytton, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Vancouver, made headlines this summer when it set a new Canadian heat record of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 degrees Fahrenheit), only to be decimated days later by a fire that killed at least two citizens.
The record heat dome linked to climate change, which saw hot air trapped by high-pressure fronts across western Canada and the western United States, also hit British Columbia this summer. Hundreds of people died as a result of the heatwave, which fanned flames.
