Winter has taken a brief holiday in southern Yukon this week, with a sudden spell of spring-like weather making for wet, slushy conditions — and setting the stage for some slippery roads when winter conditions return later this week.
A young Nunavummiut hunter, who's known for providing country food to his community, fell through the ice in late December on a snowmobile route he'd safely traveled just weeks before.
The break up on the Yukon River has been delayed this year because of ice conditions. Randy Audet has a home in the Rock Creek subdivision and went to check on it Monday, along with his mom's car. He's working out of town right now at a camp and also has another place to stay outside of Dawson City. Audet's whole property was underwater. "I've never actually seen this happen in 12 years since I've been living here."
'This year especially there's been lots of reports of thin ice and open water in places where there hasn't been in previous years,' said James Connor of the Klondike Snowmobile Association.
David Kuptana, an elder and full-time harvester said ice should be forming around his home on Victoria Island this time of year — but instead, temperatures have been hovering around zero and it's been raining.
One of the main winter highways in the Northwest Territories turned into a swamp this week following unseasonably high temperatures.
Marsh Lake was the hardest hit, but power was out 'all over,' said Jay Massie, manager of ATCO Electric Yukon, 'from Teslin to Tagish, Carcross out to Deep Creek and west towards Haines Junction.'
Despite daytime closures, evening events expected to happen on schedule this week.
For safety dogs and mushers will be trucked from Braeburn to Carmacks.
The first right whale of the season has been spotted in Canadian waters after an unprecedented winter in which not a single calf was spotted.
The ice road between Detah and Yellowknife is opening Friday, a date that ties a decades-old record.
'These fires can then pop back up in the spring when conditions warm up,' says the environment department. A local crew will likely extinguish the fires by Monday.
Construction is beginning today on the ice road connecting Yellowknife to Dettah on the N.W.T.'s Yellowknife Bay, but a warm November means that it will open in January for the second time since the 2006/2007 season, and the second year in a row.
Southern resident killer whales which are often spotted in the Salish Sea near Vancouver throughout June haven't been seen this season, and scientists believe that could be because of the lack of chinook salmon.
Residents in northeastern B.C. got quite the surprise over the weekend in the form of a large snowfall. While it's not entirely uncommon for towns in higher elevations to receive snow in August, getting a big dump is very unusual, said CBC meteorologist Brett Soderholm.
Officials in Mexico's second largest city say a storm that dumped more than a metre of hail on parts of the Guadalajara area damaged hundreds of homes.
Darcy Bourassa was just walking around his house on Tuesday when 'I must have stepped right in the perfect spot and went through.' "What I think was happening here is there's a lot of snow built up it's really insulated in the snow and it hasn't been cold this fall or this winter so there's not a lot of ice penetration underneath that snow."
The extreme cold is about 15 degrees colder than what is normal for this time of the year in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. 'I don't remember the last time we actually closed due to weather. This is a bit of an extreme'
"All it would take is one or two big storms and these houses you see behind me would be gravely at risk."
The warm periods are linked with storms that penetrate into the Arctic from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and bring the temperature up by as much as 30 C in the middle of winter.
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