Talk:Osoyoos

"Desert"/"hottest place" - falsehoods/hype

This is utter hogswallop, but common fare in Osoyoos' tourism literature; easily disprovable by the half-hour drive to Keremeos, where there is another "desert" (actually "shrub steppe" - there is no real desert in Canada), and even more by a trip to the Thompson Country between Kamloops and Lytton, and around Lillooet and up the Fraser Canyon to Williams Lake. Also "locally known as Nk'mip" is only in Nk'mip Resort/Winery's tourism bumpf, which consistently ignores the Osoyoos Desert Society's Okanagan Desert Centre on the other side of town, and plays games with particular subspecies and 10'x10' microclimates as if that would define them as any more "unique" than anywhere else in BC. Hype, hype, hype and lies, Osoyoos is not the hottest place summers, that's much more likely Lillooet, Lytton, Ashcroft and other places (even Whistler); it's only because of its low elevation that it comes across as the highest ANNUAL average.- Skookum1

"Sounds Like Skookum1 is out for lunch

The climate of the Osoyoos region, according to the Köppen climate classification, is semi-arid with summers that are generally hot and very dry. The Osoyoos area does references the fact that it is Canada’s only desert area. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres (10") per year, or areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. In the Köppen climate classification system, deserts are classed as BWh (hot desert) or BWk (temperate desert). The 50 square km area on the east side of Osoyoos Lake, locally known as the Nk'mip desert meets the criterion of a "temperate desert" and can more accurately be described as a xeric shrubland since grass cover is under 40%. This type of habitat can only be found in the Osoyoos region and varies in its compliance to the above noted classification due to microclimate effects, with the west side of the valley more appropriately called a shrub-steppe. A shrub-steppe is a type of low rainfall natural grassland with shrubs and surface likens, adapted to the environs of the area, due to low precipitation or high evapotransfer rates. Shrub-steppes are distinguishable from deserts, which are too dry to support a noticeable cover of perennial grasses but may support shrubs. Both Lytton and Lillooet receive over 400 millimetres (16") of precipitation per year, support both grassland and forest covers and can not be classified as a xeric shrubland or desert.

The historical high temperature for Lillooet was collected on July 16, 1941 (44.4 °C) using analog thermometers, offering multiple opportunities for human error. However, Lytton's historical high occurred on July 26, 2006 (41.9 °C). Osoyoos had a high of 42.8 °C on July 27, 1998, which is probably as accurate as the Lytton high. However the text said that Osoyoos is the hot spot of Canada many time each year, not the historical high in Canada. That record goes to Midale, Saskatchewan at 45.0 °C. All of the more recent historical high temperatures were collected via calibrated instrumentation managed by Environment Canada. If you review the data you will see the Lillooets high occurred over two days, both at 44.4 °C which leads one to assume that one or both of the analog thermometer readings were in error.

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