Iqaluit cooks in record heat wave

MIRIAM HILL

IQALUIT — Yep, it was hot. Record-breaking hot.

Iqaluit residents sweated through the city’s second-hottest day ever on Saturday, when the mercury in Nunavut’s capital climbed to a sweltering 25.8 C.

The record high for Iqaluit is 27.0 C, set in July, 2000.

Yvonne Wallace, a meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Arctic Weather Centre in Edmonton, said that as of Tuesday, four Iqaluit records were broken in July.

“You’ve had an amazing month here,” she said.

On July 15 the mercury climbed to 24 C, eclipsing a record set in the early 1980s.

July 27 saw a temperature of 23.3 C, breaking the old record for that day of 22.8 C set in 1969.

The heat last weekend prompted many Iqaluit residents to venture out in search of ways to keep cool.

Kieran O’Sullivan, Northmart’s retail manager, said he sold about 24 electric fans on Monday morning, wiping out his store’s supply.

“There’s usually a small period of time when fans sell out and then the weather gets a little milder and the urgency recedes,” he said. “It does seem a little warmer than usual. I know talking to visitors that come up it’s a lot warmer to them than they expect.”

O’Sullivan said Northmart also has six window-mounted air conditioners for sale.
As of Monday, none of them had been sold.

Other Iqaluit residents searched for more immediate gratification — ice cream.
Isabelle Benoit, owner of Fantasy Palace, an Iqaluit café, said the cold treat is always more popular in the summer than in other seasons.

She said she was busier than usual on Saturday, but was surprised to hear it was the hottest day on record in Iqaluit.

“That was the day that was so windy?” she asked. “Maybe that kept it from feeling too hot.”

Iqaluit isn’t the only community in Nunavut that’s been baking in record-breaking heat.

Wallace said that in Clyde River, on July 12, 13, and 14, temperatures of 19 C, 19 C and 20 C broke records set in 1984 and 1986.

The highest temperature in all of Nunavut was reached back on July 18, 1989, when the temperature in Baker Lake skyrocketed to 33.6 degrees.

Wallace said the scorching heat was caused by a weather pattern that hung over Baffin Island for the past week.

“We’ve had a really stagnant situation,” she said. “While we had the big low in the NWT, you had a beautiful upper ridge over Baffin Island, an area of high pressure.

That just brought up the warm air and with the sunny skies warming up those rocks, it’s not hard to imagine how you got where you are.”

Wallace said rain is in the forecast for Iqaluit — a prospect she suggested is a good one, as Iqaluit has had less than its normal rainfall this month.

Her prediction came true Tuesday morning, as the skies clouded over and a deluge of rain fell on the city.

For the month of July, 14.6 millimetres of rain fell in the capital. The July average is 58.2 millimetres.

The driest July on record in Iqaluit saw only 12.4 millimetres of rain.