Tornadoes, floods, wildfires and storms have all been in the news recently, and all are taken as harbingers of a coming climate catastrophe. The word “unprecedented” is often used in such reports, but are these disruptive weather events unusual for the various climates of Canada? How can we tell? It feels as if we are adrift in a sea of events, statistics and crises, with no anchors or waypoints. As with many disciplines, we climatologists turn to history to stabilize ourselves in a constantly c