CANADA IN THE YEAR 2060

Summers lost to fire and smoke. Biblical floods. Dying forests. Retreating coasts. Economic turmoil and political unrest. It's going to be a weird century. Here's what it will look like and how Canada can get through it.

- ANNE SHIBATA CASSELMAN

IT'S ARMEL CASTELLAN'S JOB TO know the weather 24/7. As Environment and Climate Change Canada's disaster preparedness meteorologist for B.C. and Yukon, he's constantly on the lookout for extremes: subtropical cyclones, arctic cold fronts, floods, heat waves and fire weather.

When he looked at the weather models in mid-June of 2021, he felt his heart beating in his throat. The skull-crushing ridge of high pressure he saw headed toward B.C. was so powerful, he knew immediately it would blanket a vast area in deadly heat. The models were forecasting temperatures so far outside of normal that the map interface on Castellan's computer was displaying all new colours-greys and whites on a spectrum of intensity he'd only ever seen go to dark red. Within days, European, American and Japanese weather models converged on a consensus: a record-breaking pressure cooker would soon envelop western North America.

"We knew records were going to be broken," says Castellan. "But that doesn't give you the reality of what was about to happen." Temperature records typically break by tenths of degrees, like speed records for the 100-metre dash. At its apex, the heat dome that engulfed B.C. that month eclipsed some records by more than five degrees, driving temperatures up to 25 degrees beyond seasonal averages.