–50 C in Alberta: What happens when extreme cold hits? | About That

Published: Jan 15, 2024 Duration: 00:05:51 Category: News & Politics

Tags : viral cbc cbc news weather canada temperature Electricity storm extreme weather climate snow winter storm winter TikTok environment seasons energy Emergency Alert power outage blackout Calgary Edmonton Cold freezing alberta Western Canada cold snap red deer keg river arctic freeze heater extreme cold -50 degrees below zero frostbite electricity grid rolling blackout electricity shortage cbc explore exploreapp about that Andrew Chang

Trending searches: power outage edmonton

just got out the shower taking my lab coat sledding Alberta had an insane weekend just look at this Bonkers weather map from Sunday temperatures in Theus 30s minus 40s smashing records up and down the province for this time of year and let's all spare a thought for the poor people in keg River it's a small farming Community about a 7-hour Drive Northwest of Ed they recorded a low on Sunday of - 50.6 de -50 and if you're wondering whether that's Celsius or Fahrenheit it doesn't even matter because we're basically at the point where the two scales converge Min -50° C- 59 F that's the coldest it's been in Alberta in the last 20 years one of the coldest places on the planet at that exact moment in time and it's the temperature at which instant noodles start to do [Music] this so as the weekend approached the warnings were all over the news brace for a dangerous deep freeze bone chilling temperatures severe weather breaking records and sure enough it's cold Jesus I'm pretty sure it's close to my 50 we don't want to go out there this they start setting all kinds of community records in some cases hitting pure cold the way they haven't seen in more than a hundred years but there's a real health and safety risk here because if you run out of power during a minus 50° deep freeze as in you have unreliable heat then people could literally freeze to death and the operator of Alberta's electrical grid is starting to see a problem their social account hadn't posted in months months but at 11:35 a.m. Friday morning they write demand for electricity in Alberta hit a new hourly peak of 12,384 megaw on Thursday we can see from their most recent supply and demand report which is a beast of a document by the way that this exceeds what they generate as in at this point they're in a power deficit even now they're having to draw on reserves Alberta's total capacity to produce um is around it's just over 20 GW however you have to keep in mind how the grid is designed and how it's designed to run right it's never expected that all of that generation is going to be available at any given time at one point Reserve power was down to 10 megaw which is like having this much water in a bucket that's supposed to be full they were forecasting being hundreds of megawatts in the whole even after using all of their backup reserves so an emergency alert is issued this uh went out to the the phones across the province this uh warning of high-risk rotating power outages 6:44 p.m. Saturday extreme cold resulting in high power demand has placed the Alberta Grid at a high risk of rotating power outages this evening albertans are asked to cut their consumption turn off anything you're not using use your microwave instead of your stove don't start that load of laundry maybe don't charge your car right now and who would have guessed it [Music] worked it was a tremendous response by Alberton um we really really appreciate it um and so that really made the difference on CBC radio's Daybreak Alberta Sunday morning we heard from the electrical operator how in real time they saw a drop in power demand it immediately fell by 100 megawatt and then a couple minutes later it fell another 100 megawatt so a 200 megawatt drop and and that got us through um what we call the the the hump Saskatchewan also managed to send power Alberta's way another 153 megawatt to help with the shortage all of that was enough to avoid having to resort to Rolling blackouts but today Alberto's by no means Out of the Woods Monday was another day of record cold temperatures The Province continues to be at the mercy of low wind which really cuts into how much wind power you can generate and at least two natural gas plants are under delivering right now one due to maintenance the other just offline altogether and so it's kind of the the combination of all of those things uh coming together at the same time that produce that tightness and it should go without saying any Province dealing with temperatures this far into the negatives has to cope with very real health risks frostbite and hypothermia are the biggest dangers and think about the homeless I just wish like there's more things for people out there for for housing and stuff one nonprofit in Edmonton which normally doesn't offer overnight Services they plan to take in 50 people as an exception over the weekend on Thursday they had 137 Friday 187 and Saturday 230 it's been a pretty significantly higher number than we had anticipated and and certainly our team has felt um you know the pressure of that as has the Community as we've tried to make sure that we're getting everyone in they told CBC they haven't turned anyone away that's a lot of humanity for what are very inhumane temperatures and here's the hoping next weekend goes a lot more smoothly it's supposed to get a lot [Music] warmer

Share your thoughts

Related Transcripts

Invest 98L, Hurricane Ernesto Forecast. Is an Arctic Blast Coming?

Category: News & Politics

Latest update hey happy sunday everybody mark again here weatherman plus i'm going give you the latest update on what's going on with invest 98l it will become hurricane maybe even major hurricane ernesto and potential impacts that's coming from this i'm still showing we got to watch this wave it could... Read more

A Huge Weather Pattern Change Is Coming...

Category: Science & Technology

Overall setup we have the coolest air mass of the season on the way so far across the central and eastern 2/3 of the us plus we'll be watching two areas of disturbed weather across the gulf of mexico that will likely impact the gulf coast regions over the coming days so let's start off with the satellite... Read more

Heat Wave Puts Pressure on Calgary to Better Conserve Water

Category: News & Politics

We could see an increase in water consumption and we are concerned if we're are going to go above the 500 uh million ler threshold officials in calgary hope that late summer vacations can help offset a late summer heatwave as mandatory water use restrictions continue we also know that with the good... Read more

Looming strike: Are Air Canada pilots underpaid? | About That

Category: News & Politics

Air canada may be about to freeze operations their pilots are threatening to go on strike if they don't start earning a lot more money meaning by early next week 670 flights a day could be cancelled affecting hundreds of thousands of people we begin tonight with the travel nightmare in the making air... Read more

Fall Forecast With La Nina Coming...

Category: Science & Technology

Overall setup in this update we're going to be talking about the enzo neutral pattern that we are currently in plus update you on the hurricane season and as we make the transition into lenia heading deeper into fall and especially into the winter months so let's take a look at the overall jet stream... Read more

This Weather Will Look A Lot Different Next Week...

Category: Science & Technology

Overall setup good afternoon everyone happy labor day weekend hope everyone out there is enjoying time with the family we've got a lot to talk about in fact we've got two big shots of cooler air are going to be pressing southbound over the course of the next week plus an update on the tropics as they... Read more

Tornado Spawned, Streets Turned to Rivers During Record Storm in Ontario

Category: News & Politics

Saturday's summer plans in the six cancelled as many of the busiest streets in the west end of the gta turned into rushing rivers it was a series of stal thunderstorms in multiple rounds that pounded the country's most populated city and wrecked havoc for millions of people and saturday august 17th... Read more

Are we too dependent on Microsoft? | About That

Category: News & Politics

Is my plane about to crash that's the thought that went through my head let me rewind when the crowd strike microsoft bug hit millions of computers worldwide a massive global technical outage caused chaos and confusion around the world crowd strike says it identified a critical problem caused by a faulty... Read more

The Next 48 Hours Will Be Critical...

Category: Entertainment

It's september 9th, 2024, and there she blows, quite literally. look at that thing spinning around down there in the gulf of mexico, just soaking up all of the ocean heat content that we've been hooting and hollering about. we finally got ourselves a real tropical threat out here in the gulf... Read more

Roads reopened following heavy rain in Toronto area

Category: News & Politics

Well a rainfall warning is in effect again today across parts of the greater toronto area heavy rain yesterday caused flooding in neighboring mississaga for more on this we're joined by cbc's albert deala so albert what's the latest on the flooding situation in msaga well natasha that uh that warning... Read more

Impacts of Record Snowfall in Sierra: 57ft+ & Climbing!

Category: News & Politics

It seems people can adapt to pretty much anything including record snow here in the sierra like these folks and this is how they get up to their house you see that how perilous it is they can't quite park in front of their house anymore because just how much snow has built up this season i could see... Read more

🌪️⚠️LIVE Coverage: TORNADO WARNING for central Minnesota Storm NOW

Category: News & Politics

Hello everyone i am meteorologist hutch johnson joining you we do have some active weather making its way through central and eastern minnesota we're going to go over the radar on that we have an impact to the metro area of the twin cities where the golden gophers are getting ready to kick off the big... Read more