Metro Vancouver kicked -off Labour Day weekend with another air quality warning for fine particulate matter and ozone. They lifted the warning on Saturday, when Environment Canada issued a heat advisory warning for Metro Vancouver, Howe Sound and the Fraser Valley. On Monday morning, Metro Vancouver re-issued the air quality warning.
“On Friday, it looked as though the smoke was coming from Washington State and the BC Interior,” says Metro Vancouver’s Air Quality Analyst, Kyle Howe. “Now, the whole Pacific Northwest is so covered in smoke it is hard to tell where, exactly, it is coming from. ”
Howe says that a series of weather changes this week should help, but the smoke is so thick, any improvement will be very gradual.
Islanders may also have noticed swarms of aphids in various locations, although they might not have known what the small black bits swirling about were. Local Entomologist Will Husby says that he confirmed their identity by peering into a spider’s web.
“They are dispersing, and this behaviour is indicative of local trees being stressed by drought,” says Husby. “Aphids are sap-eaters, and they actually do well in drought conditions because the trees don’t have the means to produce the chemicals that normally get rid of them. However, at a certain point, the trees struggle to make any sap at all. So the aphids, which are mostly female and don’t have wings, start pumping out babies, live ones that grow up really quickly. That next generation does have wings, because it is their job to disperse and find a place where trees are producing sap and they can continue their life-cycle.”
Husby emphasizes that these swarms are very localized, and may occur on some parts of the island but not others.
