From towering cedars to tiny fungi, this year's drought continues to take a toll. Drought destroys wild mushrooms in Vancouver Island forests (cheknews.ca)
I just hope the extreme weather is just like the 1976 year and it won't happen again for another 46 years. But I think that could be wishful thinking. Looks like everything everywhere is suffering in some way !!?
I hope that stories like this add to the urgency behind doing what we can to mitigate global warming / climate change effects. Most folks just don't want to think about it so the policy makers know that up to a point they can be politically safe it functionally ignoring this too. As a species we prioritize our personal comfort over all else, so unless we will allow our politicians to rein us in, nothing will be done until far too late. I was one of the mycologists working this mushroom festival, and happily it was amazing what a large group of folks hunting for mushrooms could come up with: So the event was successful in many ways including the fact that we did have enough mushrooms to identify and display. I brought in 6 flats of mushrooms from an area under immediate threat for logging (in marine fog zone which is why we had fruiting) ... so there is that aspect as well: Our collective unwillingness to impact personal investment finances leads to destruction of irreplaceable old growth forests, mindless extirpation of ecologies we still know relatively little about.
I checked the YVR rainfall data and found that no monthly or bi-monthly minimum records were broken this year. However, I knew that the driest period began after some early July rain; so, I checked the rainfall from July 15 to October 15 and found that it broke the previous record drastically. This 3 month period had 16.5 mm of rain in 2022, and the next closest was 1952 with 53.1 mm. Note that the lowest monthly rainfall for 3 months at YVR is 26.7 mm.
On another thread (Japanese maple pricing in Europe), Otto Bjornson, who lives in Chilliwack, reports that they went without rain for ~106 days.
Margot, I don't know where Otto Bjornson got his data, but the Canada.ca daily weather website for Chilliwack, BC, shows some measureable precipitation for every month this year from May to October and a total rainfall of 20.1 mm for the July 15 to October 15 period.
Dumb American Moment ... This is the first time I've heard Chilliwack in any context other than this.
From Chilliwack (band) | The Canadian Encyclopedia: "The group renamed itself Chilliwack, after the town in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver. They choose the name because they liked the sound of the word and the way one of its Indigenous meanings, “valley of many streams,” reflected their musical diversity." Wikipedia's entry on the band has been updated to call the location a city - it was incorporated as a city in 1999.
I suppose it's the same here. Last year already, there were almost none where I go ("Forêt d'Orléans, north of the Loire). 10 years ago, I would come back with at least 2 kilos of mainly "pieds-de-mouton" (Hydnum repandum), and girolles (Cantharellus cibarius), cèpes (Boletus edulis, and other boletus species), "Trompettes de la mort" ( Craterellus cornucopioides). There were even dozens of cars whose licence plates showed they came from around Paris : you woukld see people coming out of the wood with crates full of mushrooms they would sell in Rungis, the biggest wholesal market in France, just 100 km or so from here. It's even worse this year. October is the driest, hottest since 1945, and it's the same for the year 22 so far. It was 14°C this morning, and 24°C this afternoon. So far, nothing, nada, nix, "que dalle", not even "bad ones". :-( The temps will go down and the rain will come back next Wednesday or so. I wonder if there's enough live mycellium in the soil for a few to sprout...
Once killed, I suspect it takes a long time for mycelium to regrow. Certainly, in my fairly large garden, there are far fewer mushrooms (sheer numbers and also varieties) the past number of years than there were when we first arrived 17 years ago.
