April’s flood is being ranked as Canada’s third-biggest weather story of 2020.
Environment Canada released a top 10 list on Wednesday with the community’s evacuation being put in the top three.
The flood forced around 13,000 people to evacuate, while also damaging around 1,200 properties.
David Phillips, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Senior Climatologist, says adding the COVID-19 pandemic made this a crazy situation to deal with.
“It was probably one of the very first natural disasters in the world that faced a pandemic-timed situation.”
Shortly after the flood, the province temporarily relaxed COVID-19 measures to allow residents to help emergency personnel. This included multiple individuals who put ug sandbags to help protect the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre.
Despite this, there was no known spread of the virus through these efforts.
This isn’t the first time Fort McMurray has been mentioned in big weather stories.
“In 2016 it was fires, this year it was about floods,” added Phillips.
The 2016 Horse River wildfire remains the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.
The blaze cost just under $4 billion in damages. In comparison, April’s flood caused over $500 million in insurance claims.
The costliest disaster in 2020 was the Calgary Hail Storm which topped Environment Canada’s list of the year’s biggest weather stories.
Coming in second was the amount of smoke B.C. experienced from the U.S. wildfires.
Also included on the list was the long summer in eastern Canada, St. John’s ‘Snowmaggedon,’ Hurricane Teddy hitting Nova Scotia, Manitoba experiences the biggest yearly tornado, frigid temperatures help Canadians self-isolate, the winter and summer conditions experienced by the west and east at the same time, and the August long-weekend storms in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario.
These 10 were chosen from a list of 93 stories.
