[All] Houses down in Vista Hills

Mon Oct 16 13:17:33 EDT 2017

Hi folks
For many years I've been warning Waterloo City Council about creating heat islands on the West Side of Waterloo.  I initiated an Ontario Municipal Board hearing, case PL071044 regarding the need to protect the wetlands and creeks of this area and I successfully won all concessions via the experts meeting to do this that as seen in the attachments. The goal was to protect Clair Creek and  ESPA 19 which is the forest between Columbia Forest and Vista Hills as a means to protect capture zones of the Waterloo Moraine. I did this by protecting the habitat for endangered salamanders. It is my belief that it was the moraines and the forest areas that have served to protect the City of Waterloo from Tornadic activities for many generations.
The heat islands are often generated from vast paved areas or areas where vegetation has been removed. The hot sands and pavement gather heat and when air cool systems from the west encounters heat islands suddenly, it radiates heat upwards rather quickly.  
To illustrate, get a stick of incense. Hold it over a table and watch how the smoke rises. Then take that same stick of incense and move it over a warm candle and you'll see the rate of flow of the smoke quickly increases and expands upwards. Just like the smoke of the incense, when heat thermals go up it expands and displaces cold air and when it happens at a rapid rate it results in issues such as tornadic activity or microbursts downwards. This is the reason water spouts are often seen around shorelines. When the temperature of the ground is much hotter than the cold winds heading in, heat thermals going up and cold weather goes down. 
On the large scale this same basic physics can be observed with the Alberta Tar Sands where dark pools of waste water, tar sands production and exposed sandy soil has created a gigantic heat island effect which is serving to altering the global jet streams. My to Prime MInister Trudeau is online here: 
https://whoacanada.wordpress.com/tag/rossby-waves/
On the smaller more local scale, this same issue is seen in our area's Microburst activites and in both cases, the phenomenon is based on the way humans are developing land. 
Here is a youtube video I made back in 2009 speaking on this issue in regards to the Ira Needles Mall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yWAjp11dnA

Here is damage I witnessed at St. Jacob's Market where rural lands abruptly runs into a huge area of pavement at the market creating a microburst.
Video of the markethttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FBZcOQugZg

This one vendor confirmed it was the second time it happened like this for her.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCr3a78UmRc
This lady who was shopping relays how strong the winds werehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfJLr7286d8

I had the same concerns I voiced in 2014 in regards to Costco and you will see illustrations in the attachments on how these land changes influence heat thermals and weather patterns. 

When I saw the damages at Vista Hills, I was not surprised in the least. The land is cleared with lots of exposed sand that gathered the heat. When the cold system came off the moist farmland areas, it clashed with the dry hot soil and down when the houses under construction as the heat rose up and the microburst came down.
The Forested hills and farmlands to the West of Waterloo have protected Waterloo for many years acting as a cooling effect for storm systems heading West to East into town but if we degrade the forests and the buffer zone areas, we're opening ourselves up to higher risks of more severe storms and tornados.  To mitigate these risks we need to cool areas off. Natural wetlands provide up to 10 degree temperature difference. That helps. We also need trees and vegetation blended into these paved areas to help make a smoother transition from rural to urban areas to offset the potential for storms. 
By applying basic physics to geology we can mitigate risks to plan development accordingly. Weather doesn't just happen. It's based on science.
Louisette Lanteigne

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