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Snow

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…tells a story.

 

Well – part of one, at least!

So – what might be going in this particular picture then?

(You might wish to click on the image to see it in greater detail!)

I wrote in this forum a little earlier in the year about the wonderful live-streamed performance that we had enjoyed from the Old Vic in London of the late Brian Friel’s ‘Faith Healer‘ – one of my favourite plays.

Now – The Girl and I usually treat ourselves to a visit to the theatre at around this time of year, usually to take in something of a festive nature and very much as a prelude to the Christmas season itself.

This year, of course, there is not much on offer in this line – for the obvious reasons. The splendid Old Vic has – however – re-staged for live streaming Matthew Warchus’s production of Dickens’ immortal classic – ‘A Christmas Carol‘ – as adapted by Jack Thorne. We eagerly signed up to experience the production this Monday just past.

So – to the right of the picture above you can see our TV, showing the opening scenes of ‘A Christmas Carol‘. This is streaming live from London over Zoom. It is 7:00pm in London – 11:00am in Victoria.

To the left of the picture is our Christmas tree. That in itself has a tale behind it, which may be told in another post.

Through the windows one can see that the crisp morning air is filled with something else. Snow!

It is true that we don’t get much snow in Victoria – certainly when compared to other parts of Canada – but we do occasionally get things like this – a sudden, sharp and highly unpleasant snow storm with vigorous winds.

Now – the temperature outside on Monday was not particularly cold and, as a result, this snow was very wet. It came down hard and the gusting wind blew it into thick drifts covering everything in a short space of time. The snow froze on the branches of the many pine and fir tress in the surrounding areas and – assailed by the accompanying winds – brought down many sizeable branches, not least in our own garden.

At around midday – just as ‘A Christmas Carol’ had paused for its intermission – the power went out! This of course not only deprived us of the TV but also of our Internet connection. After some frantic scrabbling about we were able to watch the second half of the show – huddled closely together – on The Girl’s cell phone. Not quite the experience we had imagined, but we still gleaned enough to be moved anew by this excellent production.

The power was out for some four hours, as crews from BC Hydro struggled to fix the trail of faults that the storm left in its wake as it crossed the peninsula. The power finally came back on at around 4:00pm and – as it was by then getting dark – we breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later we heard a loud ‘bang’ from somewhere down the street. A transformer had blown and we were plunged once again into darkness. It is at a such times that we are extremely glad that we had gas installed in the house when we moved in. Our fire in the drawing room kept us warm and we were able to cook our supper on our gas range – by the light of the new LED headlamps that The Girl had thoughtfully and recently provided for just such occasions.

By the time the power came back on some three hours later the impetus to seize the day had somewhat evaporated, so it was not that long before we headed for bed.

Rather more ‘excitement’ for one day than we had anticipated!

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A snow day!

We do not normally get much snow here in Victoria (last year was an exception) and we handle it about as well as does London and the south east of England. Most years the snow experience is similar to that which we have just enjoyed; a brief – if heavy – fall of snow, followed rapidly by recovering temperatures and the associated expeditious disappearance of said frozen precipitation.

We do, however, occasionally get a ‘Snow Day’ – as did we yesterday. It was a teaching day for me and I awoke to the news that neither my – nor my students – presence would be appreciated on campus. College was closed!

Traditionally one emits a loud ‘Whoopee!’ at this point, followed by joining the eager throng rushing out to play in the snow. I restricted myself to the former – any pretence at the latter taking the form of shoveling snow to try to keep our access clear.

Anyway – it looked like this:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
One of the big challenges in this sort of weather is keeping the nectar in the hummingbird feeders from freezing. When it does so I have to contemplate venturing outside to whisk the feeders in and try to warm the contents. The birds themselves, meanwhile, are getting in the habit of lining up outside the windows – wings a-flutter – and peering in at us as if to say – “Oy! Get out here and sort this out!”

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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We had – the gentle reader may recall – our first smattering of snow here in Victoria this year on around February 6th. This was just a taster for what was to come over the following period and by February 12th we had experienced what was confidently declared a ‘once every half decade’ level of snowfall.

Should the aforesaid benign bibliomaniac wish to refresh his or her memory as to what that all looked like – then you need go no further than this snow covered post.

And that was pretty much that – at least with regards to the descent of frozen precipitation.

The temperature – however – remained rooted on the lower part of the scale and, as far as the snow that had already fallen was concerned, it stayed pretty much where it had landed.

Now as of today – March 10th – we hear that this week (finally!) – the temperature is likely to rise for the first time since the start of February into double digits!… which means that the remains of the snowdrifts should finally disappear. The small patch of snow in the accompanying image is the very last that remains on our little estate here in North Saanich and I confidently predict that it will be gone within a day or so.

Unfortunately this will mean that I must needs get out and start clearing up the debris that the winter storms have left behind. I spent a couple of hours in our back garden yesterday and it was a far from painless experience.

Ouch!

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Clearing up

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIt is two weeks now since the snows started to fall and the winds started to howl…

Whereas we have certainly had clear and reasonably pleasant days since that belated and unwanted burst of winter, the temperatures have remained low enough that we are still waiting for the last of the snows to melt and/or wash away.

It is fair to say that this quantity of snow is unusual on the island – or at least at this end of it – and that if we have to wait for another seven years or more for a repeat performance that would be no bad thing.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidBecause the winds came early and were pretty ferocious when they did so a fair amount of detritus was blown from the trees. When the serious snows started two weekends ago they not only covered up the considerable debris field that had by then formed beneath them but the weight of snow on the taller trees brought down a number of larger branches, the which were themselves then buried in the drifts.

To this point there they have remained, since there is little incentive to try to get things properly cleared up whist there is still a great deal of wet snow around.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidFoliage aside we seem to have made it through the winter storms relatively unscathed – with one somewhat sorry exception.

The good ship ‘Dignity’ is in most respects well enough designed to be able to brave all that the elements can throw at her. Sadly her canvas top – which has of late in any case been looking as though it were nearing the end of its useful life – was clearly not up to having a foot and a half of snow dumped on top of it. After holding out for a couple of days a seam split and dumped what was by then a fairly serious snowdrift into her cockpit.

I got thoroughly cold and wet cleaning her insides out and now ‘Dignity’ must suffer the ‘in-dignity’ of having to be protected by a somewhat ropey green tarpaulin until such point that I can get a replacement top made.

I suspect that she has seen worse!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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Experiencing this level of snowfall in Victoria is pretty unusual. CTV News reports thus:

“After another 23 centimetres fell on B.C.’s capital Monday in a coastal snowstorm, Environment Canada confirmed the region has seen more snow this month than any February since records began in 1941.”

Even on our little plot I can attest that the snow levels are up to the top of one’s Hunter wellies (and sometimes beyond) – in places drifting several feet and more deep!

Now, inhabitants of other parts of Canada – some of them not very far away – have a jolly good laugh at Victoria’s expense when it comes to the City’s inability to process even mild amounts of snowfall. Boy, are they chuckling now! We would naturally point out that we have plenty of other things on which to waste our tax dollars rather than investing in expensive snow-clearing machinery that would sit idle in its garage four years out of every five.

No matter.

These photos show how the snow built up over the last few days:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
I am trying to keep up a constant supply of unfrozen nectar for these little fellers:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe good ship ‘Dignity‘ handles well in most weathers, but this goes well beyond her design capabilities:

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

 

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Turns out that – following my last post on the subject of Arctic Outflows – there is much more to say on the subject of the weather. The ‘event‘ (meaning as far as I can tell ‘stuff out of the ordinary‘) referred to in that post is still ongoing, but here is the tale thus far.

On Friday we had our first dusting of snow – merely a taster as it turned out – and the first day of high winds. The forecast for the weekend promised more serious snow to come and The Girl advised me (to no resistance at all on my part) that I should try to get the snow tyres fitted to the Lexus. This I duly did and it turned out to be a really smart move.

On the Saturday our power was out for a couple of hours in the morning but we were – as so often – amongst the lucky ones; others lost power for more than twenty four hours!

Come Sunday afternoon the serious snow set in and everything started to disappear under a proper blanket of white. Another snow storm swept across Greater Victoria on Monday and a third this morning (Tuesday). The forecast looks more promising for the second part of the week, but there is a lot of snow on the ground (and on everything else) which I can’t see disappearing any time soon.

So – here are a whole bunch of snow pictures. We don’t get that much of it here so it is a source of serious fascination.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Back in the good old UK understanding the weather used to be straightforward… or at least so it seemed when ‘I were a nipper’. It rained (a lot) or the sun shone (no – honestly, it did!). The most technically complex weather situation with which one might be faced was an Occluded Front – and no-one bar the swotty people even pretended to know what one of those was.

But here I am – new continent – new weather! And at this time of life too…

So – over ‘t’other side’ of the nation there was recently a lot of snowy unpleasantness caused by a Polar Vortex. When that (whatever it might be) trundled away to the west (towards us, in other words) we were apparently to be subjected to an Arctic Outflow. I guess we do things differently on this coast.

Anyway – it turns out that this meant a whole shed-load of snow, followed by a couple of days of violent winds from the north. Hmmm! Nasty!

This is what it looked like:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
The good ship ‘Dignity‘ was happy to be safely tucked away down the side of our house…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…and with the forecast for the next week or so suggesting more of the same it seemed to be a good idea to get the winter tyres re-installed on the Lexus.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidApparently they like a bit of an outing once a year!

 

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Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…I suppose!

Given that much of the north American continent has been suffering the ‘Polar Vortex‘ (not totally sure what that is exactly but Winnipeg is shown as being -21°C today, which can’t be good!) and that the BBC is forecasting “VERY heavy snow” across Europe and “Freezing conditions and chance of snow expected in Valentine’s Day chill” for the UK – we really can’t complain here on the island that the temperature has plummeted and that we have had a sprinkling of snow…

Mind you – in Siberia it is well below -40°C – but I guess they are used to it!

No – for us it is but a mild inconvenience. Since our renovation last year – new windows all round and an attic rammed with newly blown insulation (not to mention our fabby new high-efficiency gas furnace and our gas log fire) – we are snug as bugs in the proverbial rug.

The ones I feel sorry for are the hummingbirds – and that is because when I looked outside the other morning I discovered that the nectar in our hummingbird feeders had frozen! There was a tiny little bird sitting near one of the feeders looking mournful – and tired! (Gentle readers will naturally be glad to hear that I did the necessary and thawed out and replenished the feeders).

Now – according to the Rocky Point Bird Observatory here in Victoria:

“We have two species of hummingbirds that frequent Vancouver Island, the Anna’s Hummingbird and the Rufous Hummingbird. I suspect you have the Anna’s Hummingbirds as the Rufous typically migrate in August. The Anna’s Hummingbirds spend the winter in Victoria (thanks in large part to people putting out feeders for them).”

Naturally my logical mind wants to ask – if putting out feeders for the birds persuades the Anna’s to stay – what makes the Rufous Hummingbirds head south? Are they just smarter? Is this just one of those odd quirks that reveals evolution to be even more complicated that we ever imagined it to be?

Sorry – I don’t know the answer to that one…

…but I gather that this coming weekend we will see some real snow!

Brrrrr!

 

 

 

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“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”

Carl Reiner

Snow in Victoria is a lot like snow in the south east of England; it doesn’t happen that often and it is always a bit of a non-event when it does. Compare these images with the shots that I took in Kamloops last Christmas

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Snow drops

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

Joseph Wood Krutch

Aha! I see from the indispensable BBC website that winter has finally arrived in the UK and that there has been snow in many parts. Well, well, well!

On learning that we were to be moving to Canada the most common reaction engendered in those to whom I had imparted the news was to wonder how we would survive the endless sub-zero winters – or to surmise that we must surely have a penchant for winter sports. To keep such innocents happy here are some images from our sojourn in Kamloops:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidNow – whereas those from the interior may scoff and cry “You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet” – given that to them 10 degrees below and 10 inches of snow merely represent a somewhat chilly day – here on the island we are partial to a more riviera-like climate. We are currently enjoying pleasantly balmy conditions – and we have these…!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

So there!

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