Extreme El Nino weather a boon for some on Vancouver Island

The El Nino weather system is expected to hit the West Coast this winter, with experts predicting it will be more extreme than other years.

But that isn’t phasing businesses along Vancouver Island’s coast, with many of them saying the stormy weather is a boost to business.

Ian Walker, a professor of geography at the University of Victoria, is part of a group of researchers across the Pacific examining El Nino and La Nina weather systems. He says the data they’ve collected, which was published this week in Nature Geoscience, suggests that the West Coast can expect the extreme weather based on elevated water levels.

“We can have an average coastal storm, which are typical in our winters, superimposed on tens of extra centimetres of water and maybe closer to a higher tide, causing much more damage than that storm would have in the year before,” he told Yahoo Canada News.

El Nino and La Nina are related to what happens to the tropical Pacific in terms of ocean currents. During an El Nino year, warm water makes its way across the Pacific towards the north coast of South America and deflect northwards along the west coast of North America. It typically sets up in December and is followed by La Nina, which sees cooler-than-average ocean currents right down through to the north coast of South America. The B.C. coast is one of the few areas where El Nino and La Nina both have impacts.

This year’s extreme weather will likely bring flooding and erosion along the region.

For Krissy Montgomery, owner of Surf Sister Surf School in Tofino, extreme weather predictions aren’t a cause of concern. They’ve been operating since 1999, just two years shy of the last El Nina in 1997.

“We can anticipate a lot of swells coming up, which is awesome,” she says. “Directional swells are good since it makes the waves quite spaced apart so it makes them more powerful and cleaner. It’s kind of exciting.”

Where she does see the weather affecting business is on local ski resorts, which have closed down in the last couple of years as a result of mild weather.

“Our tourism was twice as busy as what it is in the winter time,” she says. “If the mountains have a wet year, I anticipate we’ll have a very busy winter season again.”

Montgomery notes that there are several beaches in the region, which face different directions so “even if there’s massive waves on one beach, it’s probably going to be surfable around the corner.”

Charles McDiarmid, managing director at the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, which is situated directly on the coast, says that the resort was specifically built for storm watching. All guests are even outfitted with rainwear.

“November through February is storm season so we’re kind of excited about having a terrific season,” he says.

The inn has weathered past El Ninos and has experienced up to Level 1 hurricane force winds. McDiarmid says they are well prepared.

“The inn has been designed from the ground up to be the best storm watching position on the West Coast of North America,” he says.