Winter got off to an unusually warm start in Inuvik, but the cold has finally arrived.
“December was definitely warmer than usual,” the community’s mayor, Clarence Wood, said on Jan. 3. “We’re already making up for it. It’s -35 today.”
The mild December weather had a range of effects on Inuvik, which sits roughly 200 km above the Arctic Circle and is home to approximately 3,200 people.
“The ice crossing on the Mackenzie River couldn’t open in a normal time frame and was delayed,” the mayor said, which hampered travel and resupplies. The increased snowfall that came with the warmer weather also saw the municipality “spending double on snow clearing,” he added.
Some 350 km to the southwest, but still above the Arctic Circle, the small community of Colville Lake has also finally experienced familiar winter temperatures in the low -30s, but had a similarly balmy start to the season.
“It’s new,” said senior administrative officer and Behdzi Ahda First Nation band manager Joseph Kochon, who has called the community of just over 100 people home for his entire life. “It was kind of a slow start. Normally, we open up our winter road before Christmas, and even though we had a late start, the workers worked day and night and they managed to open the winter road before Christmas. The pressure was on, and they managed to do it for the resupplies for our Co-op and our fuel.
“We’ve been waiting for the cold weather, and now it’s here and we’re enjoying it. We’re really happy that it’s here, because the ice rating depends on the cold weather, so we can’t really get any resupply until the ice thickens up,” Kochon explained.
Further to the southeast, in the Tlicho community of Behchoko, things weren’t much different to start this winter, though temperatures have also plummeted down to the low -30s.
“There’s a big change in temperature,” said Monfwi MLA and Behchoko resident Jane Weyallon Armstrong. “It’s not like before. The winter has started, but it’s taking longer, and if we do have ice roads, it’s going to be a shorter season.”
Reactions to the changing winter climate in the NWT vary depending on who you speak to, and where they live. Many people in communities like Fort Simpson and Nahanni Butte, which depend on ice crossings for access to the rest of Canada, are calling for the creation of all-season bridges to mitigate the effects of slower freezes.
As an MLA, Weyallon Armstrong believes council must support those calls, contending “we need to focus on the infrastructure.”
Others, however, have a more passive reaction to the changing weather, such as Colville Lake’s Kochon.
“There’s not much you can do,” he said. “Whatever nature offers is what we have to accept. We just have to adapt as it comes. You don’t have to talk about it, you don’t have to make a big deal about it, it just comes as nature does, and we just have to accept it.”