Three a.m. Hot for Victoria. Bedcovers thrown on the floor, house stuffier than Downton Abbey.
“You awake?” asks the voice in my ear.
My reply is muffled by the pillow: “Am now.”
“Good,” says the mosquito, and flies out of swatting range.
He has been tormenting me like this for an hour. Disappears just long enough to let me drift off, then comes in whining like a Kardashian, jarring me out of my slumber.
So now I lie wide-eyed, tense as North Korea, waiting for the next attack.
I call into the blackness: “Could you be any more annoying?”
Back comes my mosquito’s response: “You look like you’ve gained weight. Your brother makes more money than you. I talk on my phone at the movies. Make America Great Again.” Then he hums that Celine Dion song from Titanic. Yes, he can be more annoying.
I try again. “What are you doing here?”
“Driving you nuts,” he says. “It’s my job.”
“No,” I say. “What are you doing here, in Victoria?”
This is the real point. Other British Columbians might be used to mosquitoes, to willingly shortening their lives in exchange for a few minutes of DEET-drenched respite, but here in the capital our bloodsucking insects are usually confined to the legislature. Our cool ocean weather, our offshore breezes, usually keep them away.
Except there’s been nothing usual about this past year, has there?
It began last fall with our rainiest October ever (we needed an umbrella 27 out of 31 days) followed by a wetter-than-average November (which is like being a tougher-than-average Sutter brother).
That gave way to our ninth-coldest winter on record, the mercury plunging all the way to -6.5 C (or, as Albertans call it, “July”).
Not only did it snow, but it didn’t melt; the airport had measurable amounts on the ground on 22 days, three times the norm. (Usually we get rid of snow the same way we get rid of a bill collector on the doorstep: close the curtains until it goes away.)
Then came a spring gloomier than a Canucks fan. We had rain on 29 days out of 31 in May, another record.
Then, suddenly, the weather did a Walter White 180, all that sodden grimness U-turning into our driest summer since Prohibition. Or ever. Friday we set a new record, 53 consecutive days without rain.
A dry stretch that long sounds great in theory, but the reality is more complicated.
No rain means Mother Nature’s street cleaner has been on holiday, leaving even the birds complaining about the amount of gull guano streaking downtown concrete. The worst wildfire season since 1958 painted our sky an apocalyptic hue and left us choking on air smokier than a Saturday night at the Legion in 1983. Our evenings have been … warm.
This last one is truly unsettling. Other Canadians might loll outside in their foundation garments, sweating and sipping mint juleps under the summer stars, but here in Victoria we expect the mercury to plunge 10 minutes after sundown.
No matter how hot it is during the day, at night it turns chillier than Andrew Weaver at an NDP Nine’n’Dine fundraiser.
Add a bit of mist blowing in off the water and our evenings are even more bracing: Antarctic explorers deal with kinder conditions than those found at Royal Athletic Park on some August nights.
Hence the standard Victoria two-piece summer wear combo — shorts on the bottom, heavy Ernest Hemingway cable-knit sweater on top — that so confounds newcomers.
Except for the past two weeks our nights have been stifling. Until this weekend we were sleeping (or not) in the basement, flipping the pillow to the cool side all night long, praying for rain to bring us some relief.
This gives us plenty of time to think of things, like the just-released State of the Climate in 2016 report, which confirmed previous studies that found, among other things, that last year was Earth’s hottest ever.
Led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the report said global temperatures hit a new high last year, as did sea levels, as did the surface temperatures of the world’s oceans.
I glared at my mosquito. “Are you a product of climate change?”
He shrugged. “Could just be a weird year for Victoria.”
Then he paused: “Given the bigger picture, why are you preoccupied by mosquitoes?”
