Here's which disasters piqued Canadians' interest the most

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Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 4:27 PM - Canada's cultural memory is scarred with hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and other disasters wrought by the changing seasons. 

But which one most stirs (or shakes) readers of The Weather Network's website, at least over the course of a year?

An analysis of active weather stories published on www.theweathernetwork.com from May 1, 2015, to April 30, 2016, has a surprising answer: At 37 per cent of active weather pageviews, hurricanes were the natural disaster Canadians were most interested in -- despite the fact no tropical storm even came close to landfall on Canadian soil.

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Next up: Tornadoes, at 29 per cent, despite the fact the season was below average. Wildfires, by contrast, burned large swaths of Western Canada and displaced thousands of people, but only garnered 19 per cent of weather disaster pageviews -- fewer than one in five.

Less counterintuitive: Only 15 per cent of severe weather clicks were on flood stories, reflective of a milder than usual season.

Here's a closer look at the numbers:

Hurricanes - 37 per cent

No matter what name they're known by -- typhoon, cyclone, hurricane -- it is the same thing: Tropical storms, featuring powerful winds and pounding rains, that can claim lives and wreck infrastructure.

The Atlantic season was not too removed from average -- with 11 named storms, four full-fledged hurricanes and two hurricanes of Category 3 or higher -- and had a barely even tangential impact on Canada, with no landfalls here.

"It really didn’t pick up until quite late in the season and the last storm of the season happened a full three weeks before the season officially ended," Scott Sutherland, The Weather Network's science writer, says.

Image: Hurricane Joaquin NOAA/NASA

But it was a deadly season nonetheless. Hurricane Erika killed some 30 people in the Caribbean, and Hurricane Joaquin was responsible for 34 deaths, including the 33 crew aboard the cargo ship El Faro, which went down with all hands. And Hurricane Patricia, the subject of the single most-read hurricane story on The Weather Network website, made headlines for being one of the strongest tropical storms on record.

Out in the Pacific, the story was even more striking. 

With El Niño in full swing, the warm waters of the Pacific added fuel to the typhoon season, which Sutherland says was the second most active since 1992, with 27 named storms, along with 18 typhoons and including eight full-fledged super typhoons. 

"That’s likely what attracted all the attention. Several storms spinning at once provided a spectacle to see. Strongest storms on record attracted a lot of attention as well," he says.

Image: Tropical Storm Linfa, Typhoon Chan-hom and Typhoon Nangka, July 9, 2015. Credit: SSEC/CIMSS, University of Wisconsin–Madison/Japan Meteorological Agency.

The popularity of stories about hurricanes, even when there was no real threat to Canada, says something about Canadian audiences: They don't seem to be unaware of crises beyond their own borders, and take a definite interest when powerful storms threaten people both near and far.

"Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re not affected by them that attracts the attention -- they’re exotic, and extreme, but safe," Sutherland says. "Most Canadians can 'enjoy' the spectacle of them without any personal involvement."

Tornadoes - 29 per cent

Closer to home, tornadoes twisted their way across parts of the Canadian landscape, as they do each year. But overall, the season was below average, and very uneven.

In fact, the most-read tornado story over the time period studied actually comes not from the 2015 season, but from March 2016, when an EF-1 tornado damaged several farm buildings and trees in Mount Forest, Ont.

Time will tell whether that tornado was a harbinger for an active 2016 season, but 2015 was not too abundant in twisters.

Canada-wide, 22 tornadoes touched down in 2015, well below the average of 62, and all provinces posted below-average totals. Ontario led the way with eight confirmed twisters, below its average of 12, and Ontario-centric stories dominate the top-10 most-reach tornado stories. Saskatchewan, usually the front runner with an annual average of 18 twisters, saw not a one confirmed.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't any destruction. No matter how few there may be in a season, a tornado is a tornado, and can case major devastation.

"For tornadoes in Ontario last year there was 'minimal' damage when compared to other years like the Angus and Goderich tornadoes," Weather Network meteorologist Matt Grinter says. "But compare that to the Tilston, Manitoba tornado on July 27 that caused severe damage to multiple farms and was a long lived tornado that lasted over two hours."

Wildfires - 19 per cent

By far the most impactful natural disaster in Canada in 2015 was the wildfires that swept a large part of the West amid persistent high temperatures and dry conditions.

As such, its low ranking, only 19 per cent of pageviews in the period we studied, is something to think about. Recall, however, that this analysis only included data from May 1, 2015, to April 30, 2016, just before this year's wildfire crisis in Fort McMurray began in earnest.

"The weather pattern of 2015 suggests that a significant upper level high pressure system was in place for most of summer 2016, consequently contributing to extreme fire danger with warm temperatures and low atmospheric moisture," Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton says. "Warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific also would have fostered an environment favorable for high pressure."

Though paling in comparison to the sheer number of people forced out of their homes in Fort McMurray in May 2016 (again, outside the scope of this review) Saskatchewan still faced a dire situation, with 13,000 people having to evacuate in the face of wide-ranging wildfires in the La Ronge area.

The parched B.C. Interior also struggled with wildfires. Some 50 structures burned, and more than 1,000 homes were evacuated. One person was killed while felling a "danger tree" during the fight, according to BC Wildfire. In neighbouring Alberta, which also suffered a difficult season, an air tanker pilot was killed in a crash in the Cold Lake area.

The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society has the total stats: Some 5,000 fires consumed around 3.25 million hectares, quadruple the 25-year average.

With such devastation, directly impacting Canadians, shouldn't the wildfires have topped the list? The fact it didn't says something about the way The Weather Network's readership is distributed.

Simply put, Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two most populous provinces with the two largest concentrations of Weather Network readers, saw a very quiet wildfire season compared to the West, which is a plausible reason for the lack of raw pageviews country-wide on that file. However, that doesn't mean people in those provinces were completely oblivious. The top-10 includes stories on how the West's wildfires were large enough to be seen from space, with smoke lowering air quality in B.C.'s Lower Mainland and making for spectacular sunsets in eastern Canada.

And though 2016's Fort McMurray crisis isn't in the scope of the data, a glimpse into the details shows that though the pageviews of the most-read stories on that disaster are dominated by readers from Calgary and Edmonton, Toronto is in a solid third place.

Looking a little closer at the pageview frontrunners, it seems Weather Network readers have a bit of taste for the bizarre as well.

As with hurricanes, it shows Canadians aren't blind to wildfire disasters in other countries...though one of the most-read non-Canadian wildfire stories involved a fire started by a cyclist who answered nature's call.

Floods - 15 per cent

If the West's wildfires merit a higher rank in terms of Weather Network reader interest, the other side of that coin, raging floods, likely deserves its spot at the bottom, reflective of a mild flood season in 2015 and in 2016 -- the latter especially due to very little snow on the ground by the time of the spring melt compared to previous years.

"There was nothing compared to the New Brunswick floods of 2014 or the Calgary flood of 2013," Grinter says.

An analysis of individual flood stories shows Atlantic Canada, particularly New Brunswick, did struggle with flood risk in September 2015 and April 2016, while flash flooding due to heavy rain in B.C. also made a mark on Weather Network readers.

And, as with wildfires, readers didn't turn their noses up at stories from abroad, with floods in United States and U.K. capturing some attention.

SOURCES: The Weather Network | B.C. Wildfire | Saskatchewan Wildfire | Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society