Currently in Toronto — October 18th, 2022
The weather, currently.
A vertically stacked low-pressure system will remain draped across the Great Lakes. This means that two disturbances are working together to usher in very cool air and in turn, multiple opportunities for showers to push in.
There will be some cloudiness early Tuesday morning with a chance of a spotty shower, as the kids begin class. It will be cold tomorrow morning with a wake-up temperature near 4°C. However, it'll feel closer to the freezing mark with the wind chill. Although an odd sunny break is very likely tomorrow, it'll still be a mainly cloudy day. There will be additional scattered showers for the afternoon. The high is a very cool 8°C, and it will be windy at times too, a SW flow 25-50km/h.
Tuesday night: Cloudy periods with isolated showers by dawn, the low 3°C.
What you need to know, currently.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) announced last week that it has canceled the snow crab season for the first time in its history, due to an extreme crab population decline across the Bering Sea.
Snow crabs are cold-water species that usually sit clustered together in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees C (35.6 degrees F). When the water warms and sea ice gradually disappears, the ocean is no longer liveable for the crustaceans. Climate change has, of course, exacerbated these harmful conditions.
The snow crab population began to rapidly shrink in 2018, when the population fell from around 8 billion to just 1 billion by 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The count in 2022 has dropped even further.
“Snow crab is by far the most abundant of all the Bering Sea crab species that is caught commercially,” Daly told CNN. “So the shock and awe of many billions missing from the population is worth noting – and that includes all the females and babies.”
Local fisheries — like Bristol Bay’s red king crab fishery, which will also be closed for the second year in a row — will inevitably be impacted.
—Aarohi Sheth
What you can do, currently.
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