Rain in the northeast for the foreseeable future

Rain in the northeast for the foreseeable future
With heavy rain on the way to the northeast, Rick Wyman has all the weather forecast details you need for the next seven days.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

CBC

2 hours ago

• CBC

Boston ditches roadside grass

Hello, Earthlings! This is our weekly newsletter on all things environmental, where we highlight trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page. This week: Boston ditches roadside grass The grand boulevards and parkways of cities are often divided by a grassy median — a long green mound, typically enclosed by a cement curb. That may add a bit of welcome green to a broad strip of asphalt. But some cities, such as Boston, say there's no place in their urban environments for roadside grass that, frankly, does so little useful work. "We're slowly trying to transition away from vegetation medians that are not managing stormwater," said Kate England, director of Boston's Office of Green Infrastructure, which works with all city departments including Transportation. The replacement seems similar, if less tidy: the grass appears unmowed and mixed with plants in varying shades of green and splashes of white, yellow and purple flowers. But look closer, and you'll notice it's a depression rather than a mound. And the curb has some odd breaks in it. Earlier this spring, our newsletter looked at how Vancouver has embraced "green infrastructure" such as rain gardens to absorb rainwater, preserve sewer capacity, filter pollutants and prevent flooding. That's what Boston is doing, too. The city's Office of Green Infrastructure is transforming strips of grass along its roadways — both the edges and in the middle — into a type of "green infrastructure" called a bioswale. That's a landscaped depression designed to capture and filter rainwater, while improving air quality, reducing urban heat islands and providing habitat for wildlife. England said the city is seeing more intense and frequent storms and flooding due to climate change. When that happens with traditional mounded medians and curb strips, water runs off them, adding to the water flooding onto streets and into drains (and making it harder to keep grass and trees on them alive). "We know that we need to do something more than just, you know, the standard storm drain infrastructure," she added. Turning those areas into bioswales means digging out soil until they're lower than the road, and making breaks in the curb so water will flow off the road into the garden, which is planted with native wildflowers and grasses. Boston now has a policy that requires green infrastructure in major roadwork projects. "So moving forward, all our street projects that do some kind of reconstruction … will all have green infrastructure in them," England said, "which is very cool." A big street project for 2025 is the reconstruction of Cummins Highway in southwest Boston that previously had one of the highest rates of traffic crashes in the city. It will include 32 gardens designed to capture rainwater and the addition of a porous asphalt bike lane on both sides of the roadway. Rain gardens are also included in about 20 Boston neighbourhood " slow streets" projects, which aim to calm traffic and improve pedestrian safety with features such as "bump-outs" – curb extensions that narrow the road at intersections, improving pedestrian safety, and can be used as planters. Boston created its Office of Green Infrastructure (OGI) in 2022 to build, install and maintain green infrastructure in roads, parks and other city property. "We are taking advantage of the fact that we have all this available land," England said. A recent audit that found the city owns more than 1,000 small parcels of underutilized land, or about 88 hectares. While many Boston city departments embraced the idea of green infrastructure on their property, their staff were also hesitant due to their lack of knowledge about keeping plants alive. So one of the OGI's key roles is maintaining all of it, England said. That's through a maintenance contractor, a group of local volunteers and through PowerCorpBOS, the city's 10-month green job skills training program for youth, in collaboration with city working groups with staff from different departments and local watershed associations and community groups. "Maintenance is a big deal for us," England said. "So we really went at it hard and came up with a way to make sure that these green infrastructure features are getting the attention they need." Christine Mettler, former director of Green Infrastructure at Green Communities Canada, said in Canada, Vancouver has done a good job of involving volunteers in maintenance, which not only keeps green infrastructure healthy, but helps with community engagement and support. England says community support is key to success. She said it's difficult for her office to say no if a group of community members such as a school ask to build a rain garden. "Your best and strongest advocates are going to come from your neighbourhoods and finding ways to actively engage them will make your life easier," she said. "We're all kind of in the same boat when it comes to climate resilience here. And this is a really easy kind of win-win for everybody." Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: Don't have a garden? Adopt a roundabout and plant things for the bees! We meet a TikToker who's done just that. And then we travel from coast to coast to hear about a push to let sections of city parks grow a little wild. We head to one of these meadows to hear how they attract pollinators, and hear why creating "pollinator pockets" for busy bees and "hairy" moths can be a climate solution across the country – and a patriotic one at that. What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador. Reader Feedback Last week, Bridget Stringer-Holden looked at tips for making your garden more sustainable and eco-friendly to provide habitat for pollinators. Eric Gallienne wrote: "I live in a mature neighbourhood in north Burlington, [Ont.] I have two very large honey locust trees that are just finishing their flowering stage. In the past, you would have thought I lived next to an airport with the loud humming of bumble bees foraging on the locust flowers. There would typically be 2,000 to 3,000 bees on the trees for a week or so. This year, I counted five bumble bees in total. This would not seem to be a loss of habitat issue here as there is an abundance of woods along the escarpment, open fields and flowering gardens throughout the neighbourhood and that has not changed much in the past 30 years. The decline has been happening for a number of years. I would surmise that there must have been a change in the use of or in the type of insecticides being applied. Europe and the U.K. have banned many chemicals shown to kill bees. Canada has not followed suit and should do so. We cannot afford to lose our pollinators." Alison Rodrigues had a complaint about one of the photos in last week's story: "Why use a beautiful garden shot that is mainly non-native plants? Surely someone has a beautiful pollinator garden pic with loads of native plants?" So, readers, we'd love to see a photo of your native plant gardens — when you send them in, please include your location and what plants are included in the photo so other readers know what works in their region. The Big Picture: Where are all the EVs? A map of Vancouver-area municipalities shows the percentage of EVs among new vehicle sales is highest in a number of suburban communities. A similar trend, with higher EV adoption in a ring around dense urban centres, can be seen in a map of southern Ontario below showing the number of battery EV registrations per 100 people. Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs for Clean Energy Canada, says suburbs are "your best place to go electric" because they're dominated by single-family homes where it's easy to install home charging. Suburban dwellers tend to have long car commutes that make fuel savings add up more quickly when they buy an EV. To explore the interactive versions of these maps, check out this article on what groups of Canadians are buying EVs and where. — Emily Chung A battery that stores heat in sand has started working in the southern Finnish town of Pornainen. The town has a district heating system that can now stop burning oil with help from the battery. Here's how it works. About half the residents of Vienna live in social housing. Here's what changes the city is making to get social housing off natural gas by 2040 and reduce climate risks for residents. Toronto's bike sharing program is so popular that it runs out of bikes at many locations, frustrating riders. In this video, CBC's Chris Glover explains how the city plans to solve this problem — by learning from what New York City did. China is already the global leader in making lithium-ion batteries, and now it's working ahead on mass producing sodium-ion batteries. These salt batteries could reduce the need for certain raw materials, and are already being used for energy storage and in electric scooters. BBC takes a look at how China's salt battry industry is expanding. From 'greenwashing' to 'green hushing' — companies complain new law stifles environmental efforts Some corporate leaders say new anti-greenwashing legislation has had the unintended effect of dissuading companies from taking climate action. But environmental organizations and others say that's a cop out. Bill C-59's changes to the Competition Act were meant to prevent companies from misrepresenting the environmental benefits of their products or practices — known as "greenwashing." The bill also gave the Competition Bureau more power to penalize companies that can't back up their claims with detailed evidence. But critics say requiring all such claims conform to "internationally recognized methodology" leaves too much room for interpretation and makes companies vulnerable to legal action. Michael McCain, the executive chair and former CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, calls this "green hushing." It's "the opposite of encouragement for companies to do the right thing," McCain told Laura Lynch, host of CBC Radio's What on Earth. The changes create so many "obstacles and consequences" to touting a company's environmental efforts, that the companies stop doing them, he said. Royal Bank has "retired" its commitment to facilitate $500 billion in sustainable finance by this year, pointing to changes in the Competition Act. Likewise, the investment arm of the Canada Pension Plan dropped its promise to invest in line with Canada's target to reach net zero by 2050, because of "recent legal developments," said CEO John Graham. Tyson Dyck, a lawyer who consults on environmental and climate matters for corporate clients, including many in the energy sector, says clients across the country have been "very concerned" about the changes, which took effect last June. He says the business community expected clarity about how to make environmental or climate-related claims. Instead, they got "confusion," he said. "And I think they struggled interpreting the new provisions." But environmental groups say no one is forcing companies to talk about their climate efforts, and that corporations should behave sustainably because it's the right thing to do, not for the boost to public image. Matt Hulse, a lawyer with Ecojustice, an environmental law charity headquartered in Vancouver, says many companies complaining about the changes were previously alleged to be greenwashing. They "made ambitious claims around climate and environmental action and have been accused of not following through on those things," said Hulse. That suggests, to him, that the "legislation is actually working.' 'Unintended consequence' But McCain says businesses have a legitimate concern that the legislation isn't written effectively. "This is a case of very good intentions in the underlying policy with a very grossly negative unintended consequence, which by definition makes it bad policy." The problem, he said, is requiring a company's claims to be backed up by "internationally recognized methodologies." There aren't enough internationally recognized organizations or standards, he said, or they are not "scientifically credible, in our judgment." He says it's "patently unreasonable" to expect a company to spend tens of millions of dollars on environmental works "and not be able to shout from the mountaintop the good things that we're doing." Fair playing field Emilia Belliveau, energy transition program manager for the advocacy group Environmental Defence in Vancouver, says there was good reason for keeping the language in the act flexible — keeping the law itself flexible as best practices change across various industries. Also, holding companies to internationally recognized methodologies prevents them from doing their own analyses "that can skew the data," she said. "It creates a fair playing field across companies so that we're measuring the same things, and we're able to make sure that the quality of the data, the evidence that's being used as proof for these green claims, holds up to rigour." Former MP Charlie Angus worked on a number of green initiatives over the years, and voted in favour of the changes. He stands by them. "You can't sell a car and say it's the safest on the road when you know there's serious problems with it. You can't sell cigarettes and say, the way they used to, 'This is the lighter brand of cigarettes,' when all cigarettes make you sick," he said. The changes "make sure that when companies are talking about net zero and reducing emissions, that they actually were telling the truth and not lying." The Competition Bureau released its final guidance on the anti-greenwashing legislation on June 5, which both corporations and some environmental groups had hoped would provide more specifics. Hulse, at Ecojustice, said "there was room for improvement," but that overall, it's not that hard for a corporation to establish a basis for their claims, looking to other jurisdictions abroad, and applying well-established principles from accounting and the scientific method. They can also pay a $5,000 fee to seek an opinion from the bureau about any claim they intend to make — "a trivial amount" for a large corporation, he says.

CTV News

7 hours ago

• CTV News

Environment Canada explains timing of Essex tornado alert, as experts weigh in

A storm prompted a tornado warning on June 5 at 12:32 a.m., which many residents say came after the worst of the weather had passed. Following concerns from Essex residents about the timing of a tornado warning earlier this month, Environment Canada is explaining the science behind how and when such alerts are issued. It comes as the Town of Essex formally moves forward with a request for answers, approving a motion this week to ask Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to clarify how its alerts are triggered and whether southern Essex County has adequate radar coverage. The June 5 storm prompted a tornado warning at 12:32 a.m., which many residents say came after the worst of the weather had passed. According to ECCC, that alert followed a severe thunderstorm warning issued at 12:03 a.m., when the storm was over Harrow and tracking northeast. 'Tornado Warnings are issued by ECCC when there is evidence that a tornado has developed or may form imminently,' said spokesperson Hannah Boonstra in a statement to CTV News. She said meteorologists 'always strive to provide the best lead-time possible with all warnings and use all available observation data to inform their decisions.' Boonstra explained that Essex County is primarily covered by radar in Exeter, Ontario, with additional data used from neighbouring U.S. radar systems to help forecasters monitor developing storms. 'ECCC is continually enhancing its weather services,' she added, 'taking full advantage of the latest technology to upgrade the tools used to predict and relay information about the weather to Canadians.' Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy says the storm and the delayed alert have reinforced the need for timely communication in the region. 'We know Windsor-Essex County; we're surrounded by water. We're surrounded by the Great Lakes, the river,' said Bondy. 'We know that there's storms here that can be quite volatile, and we need accurate information.' She says she's hopeful the town's outreach will lead to more than just a written response. 'Maybe there's a relationship where in Essex we offer some municipal property for them to use to put more infrastructure,' said Bondy. 'One of the hardest things' to forecast CTV News also spoke with David Sills, director of Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project, who said tornado warnings are notoriously difficult to issue with precision. 'Tornadoes are very difficult to warn for,' he said. 'Every second counts when it comes to tornado warnings.' Sills said his team evaluates the performance of Environment Canada's warnings each year, and while they've improved slightly, there's still room to grow. 'They've been improving the last few times we've done the report card,' he said. 'But, you know, there's a lot of work left to do.' He noted that the target lead time for a tornado warning is only about ten minutes — making fast, accurate alerts a constant challenge for forecasters. 'It's really one of the hardest things as a forecaster, dealing with tornadoes and tornado warnings,' he said. Tornado risk remains high in Ontario In 2024, Ontario led the country in tornado activity, with 60 tornadoes confirmed across the province, according to the Northern Tornadoes Project. Among them was Canada's first tornado of the year — an EF0 landspout that touched down in Malden Centre, right in Essex County, on March 16, 2024. It tied a record for Ontario's earliest confirmed tornado on record. The rising number of verified tornadoes in recent years is due in part to improved radar coverage and enhanced investigations by the Northern Tornadoes Project, which uses satellite imagery, drone surveys and ground reports to confirm and classify events. While most tornadoes are weak and short-lived, Bondy says they still present serious risk and require timely communication tools. 'We haven't yet heard back [from Environment Canada], but I've heard back from residents that they need to do more,' she said. 'We need to have a good working relationship with Environment Canada so that we can trust and rely.'

CTV News

8 hours ago

• CTV News

Severe thunderstorm, tornado watches in Sask.

WATCH: Parts of central and southeastern Sask. were under severe thunderstorm or tornado watches and warnings on Thursday. Angela Stewart has your forecast.