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Nova Scotia

Weather horribilus: the year's worst

Hurricane Juan came in second on Environment Canada's list of top 10 weather stories of 2003.
CBC News ·

Hurricane Juan came in second on Environment Canada's list of top 10 weather stories of 2003.

The Top 10 are:

  • B.C.'s "summer of fire", flood, and drought
  • "Hurricane Juan" made landfall on Sept. 29
  • The long, cold winter in Eastern Canada from Remembrance Day to Easter
  • Wildfires that blazed from Ontario west to the Okanagan
  • Drought and grasshoppers on the Prairies
  • Spring rainstorm that poured 80 to 120 millimetres of rain onto Atlantic Canada
  • New Brunswick's Groundhog Day storm of up to 50 millimeters of freezing rain
  • A near-record number of avalanches in the Rockies, killing three times the usual number of people
  • "Whitewashers," or late spring storms that dumped huge amounts of snow in May and even June
  • The ice jam at Badger. Three central Newfoundland rivers overflowed their banks just before five days of cold Arctic air hit the town. Residents had to be evacuated, and many were not able to return for several weeks


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    The floods and fires in British Columbia topped the list of the year's biggest weather stories.

    David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, says warm ocean water in the North Atlantic caused the formation of an unusual number of tropical storms and hurricanes. Hurricane juan was the big one – a category two hurricane with winds of 158 km/h or stronger in some places.

    "In fact we've only seen four such hurricanes of that size since the 1800s, and only two hurricanes of any status have come over to Prince Edward Island," says Phillips.

    The insurance bill from Juan is pegged at $80 million dollars, so far, but people haven't finished counting all the damage.

    Also on the top-10 list was a rainstorm that hit the region in late March and early April. It ranked number six on Environment Canada's top weather stories because the rain coincided with spring run-off, causing a lot of flooding.

    Phillips says it created all sorts of damage, "[It] took out countless bridges, undermined many roads and highways, and to the province of Nova Scotia it was the most expensive storm ever."

    The ice storm in New Brunswick this past spring also made the top-10 list.

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