After one of the driest Octobers on record, southwestern British Columbia is about to get very wet. The season’s first atmospheric river, a band of airborne moisture hurtling across the Pacific, is set to unleash hundreds of millimetres of rain in the coming days. In parts of BC, like the mountainous Fraser Canyon around Boston Bar, which saw more than 85,000 hectares torched by a series of summer wildfires, the rain brings new dangers. …the blazes destabilized the landscape over hundreds of hectares. According to a BC Ministry of Forests report, those areas are primed for “debris flows, sediment-laden floods, or nuisance flooding” that could affect roads, homes, rail lines and communities. If that happens, it could be a repeat of November 2021, when an atmospheric river caused “extensive landsliding, debris flows, and debris floods” in the same watersheds — shutting down highways and forcing evacuations. [National Observer requires a subscription for full access]