Extreme heat brings earlier fruit harvest

At a fruit stand in Vancouver, cherries and blueberries are for sale about three weeks earlier than usual, the result of a record-setting heat wave in Vancouver and throughout the province of British Columbia.

Maria, a berry seller, said the cherries were super early this year. "At least three weeks, or maybe more," she said. "Normally, if we are lucky, we have them for the first week of July, and we already have like two or three weeks with them."

Vancouver has seen little rain during the last month, with temperatures climbing near or above 30 C for several days in a row. That's considered extreme heat in what is typically a mild west coast climate.

On a recent weekend, 64 separate temperature records were smashed across west Canada, with the highest temperature of 40.6 C recorded in the southeast corner of the province.

Maggie Wilson, a resident sitting on a beach close to downtown Vancouver, said she did not like the hot and dry weather.

"My garden is getting dried up, and I'm struggling to keep everything watered," she said. "I'm worried about what this is going to mean for the forest fire season."

Sarah Henderson, an environmental health scientist at the University of British Columbia, was concerned about the coincidence of hot weather with poor air quality.

"When we have forest fires burning in parts of the province, they will cause episodes of the poorest air quality that Canadians will ever experience," she told Xinhua on Thursday.

Recalling a similar heat wave British Columbia experienced in 2009, which caused the death of an estimated 110 people around Vancouver, Henderson said heat waves like that will likely become longer and more common.

"We have to expect more extreme events and them happening more frequently," she said.

With no end in sight to the heat, according to the latest forecast, British Columbians may be facing changes beyond an early berry harvest.