Environment Canada has weather sensors installed at the top of the lighthouse at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve. When windspeed was noted for every hour of the year, the reality of how ineffective Oil spill Cleanup would be becomes evident.
Hourly weather conditions summary for the past 24 hours. This includes conditions, temperature, humidity, dew point, wind speed/direction, air pressure, visibility, and wind chill/humidex (when applicable)
The archive of past data for every hour per day of each month go to this Environment Canada website link and enter the year month and date to access the data.
From this archive analysis can be made of wind speed conditions in the Eastern Entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We are concerned that although the claim is made that Canada has World Class oils spill response capabilities , the reality is that for a large portion of time cleanup by booms and skimmers is not possible because the equipment cannot be deployed at wind speeds above 28 km/hr.
Some facts from the Environment Canada data:
1. In July of 2022 there were 11 days when the wind speed every hour was 28 km/hr or greater. and 69.5% of the hours in the month, clean up equipment could not be deployed due to high velocity wind conditions.
2. In March of 2023, the wind speed was 28 km/hr or greater 37% of the time.
3. In Februarry of 2023 , the wind speed was 28 km/hr or greater 43 % of the time
4. In January of 2023 , the wind speed was 28 km/hr or greater 36% of the time
5. In the first week of April 2023 the wind speed was 28km/hr or greater 51% of the time
In the graph above, the white arrows in the current table of Race Passage in the
Eastern entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca represent the times of the day on on April 5 when current speed was above the speed of 3 nauts, the speed at which equipment deployed for containing oil spills on water fails. This means only
brief windows when the tide is changing would oil spill retainment be possible.
