114 oF. Temperatures, Dust Storms, Destroyed Crops, Etc.

This is not a story from 2037 but rather 1937 and I thought it was appropriate on this particular day, Live Earth, plus the revelation that at one time Greenland was a forest paradise.

1937 -Canada's hottest day on record; temperatures reach 45.0C (114F) in Midale and Yellow Grass, both in southern Saskatchewan. *

And still the dust blew.

On June 24 it blew with such fury that it forced the Moose Jaw fair to cancel its horse races and shut down. The force of the storms blowing across southern Saskatchewan was felt as far east as Winnipeg, where once again a dust haze obscured the sun.

Highways became so drifted with dust as to be impassable. South of Moose Jaw the blowing alkali from dried-up Johnstone Lake coated the countryside a dirty white and drove everybody indoors. Sixty miles to the south, near the town of Rockglen, Fife Lake, which had once been thirty-five miles long, dried up completely. Far to the east in the Oxbow area, the Lake of the Rivers went dry and in the process a great mass of prehistoric buffalo bones was uncovered. The farmers of the area lived that year on the returns they got from the fertilizer plants for the carloads of bones them managed to harvest. Near Arcola, the trains were dealyed by the myriads of grasshoppers that lit on the rails and were ground to grease.

The Saskatchewan crop was destroyed by the fourth week of June. Then the heat got worse. At the end of June, 100-degree temperatures were common everywhere and the areas as far north as Prince Albert got a bitter taste of what Regina and Moose Jaw had experienced in 1936. The peak came on July 5 when it touched 110 degrees at Regina, Moose Jaw, and a dozen other southern comminities. For the rest of the summer ninety-degree heat was the rule, for the hot weather extended well into August, and the records established all over on August 23, when it went well over the 100-degree mark again.

There had been hotter Junes than 1937, hotter Julys, and hotter Augusts, but taken together there had never been a longer and hotter summer. - James H. Gray - The Winter Years

Posted by Kate at 9:00 AM