“Snow makes a soft bed, but no man wakes from it. That was the wisdom of the North”.
Mark Lawrence
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Yesterday saw one of the first big wind storms of the year here at the southern end of Vancouver Island. As so often happens at this time of the year many trees lost branches as a result (in the case of deciduous trees because they have not yet shed their leaves) and our electricity provider – BC Hydro – were kept fully employed with investigating and repairing damaged power lines (regular readers will know that here in BC most power supplies are carried on poles rather than buried underground as they are in the south east of the UK).
Somewhat annoyingly we lost power here for about three and a half hours during the afternoon, at a point at which I was hoping to prepare for my class today. As the light faded in the early evening I cooked dinner on the gas barbecue outside and we had just started to dine by candle light when the power was eventually restored.
The reason that this was particularly annoying was because BC Hydro had already been in touch with us a week or so back to inform us of a scheduled outage today (for ‘system upgrades’) at a time that clashed with the start of my class. The relevance is – of course – that because I now teach exclusively from my studio at home, the loss of power prevents me completely from so doing. I had arranged with my students for a later start for the class but when I awoke this morning it did occur to me that BC Hydro might have rescheduled the outage as a result of their engineers having worked such long shifts yesterday. I called them to check. After a lengthy rumination by the call-centre chappie (who clearly had no real idea what was going on) I was told categorically that the outage would indeed take place.
Somehow inevitably – it did not do so!
I even went out on my bicycle at one point looking for a BC Hydro crew, but none was to be found.
In the end I started my class late and they had to put up with my grumbling about how – wherever one lives in the world – it is impossible to find efficient service industries that do what they say they are going to do – when they say they are going to do it.
I am fully prepared now for the power to go out suddenly and without warning in the middle of my next class…
Tags: BC Hydro, British Columbia, out, teaching, Weather
What a difference…
Just the other night I took this picture in the gloaming as we entertained a dear friend to a garden-based repast. It was Sunday evening and it was a good way to end the weekend. The Haro Strait obliged us – as it often does at this time of year – with a spectacular array of subtle tones and changing light – and very beautiful it was too.
We discussed the weather forecast that had been circulated during the day that had threatened the first (and really quite early) of the coming season’s fall winds. The Haro Strait seems to attract them but – as I say – not usually for another month or so.
Sure enough, the following day was blustery to a fair degree. Not a winter storm for sure, but certainly a ‘promise’ of things to come. What made it particularly unusual is that the temperatures here are still comfortably well into the twenties (Celsius) so the winds were more like those encountered in desert lands – hot and dry.
They also blew in from the South – which had another un-looked for outcome… On the Tuesday morning we awoke to a very different view.
Yes – that fuzz in the middle of the picture is smoke… wildfire smoke!
This season has been mercifully free – thus far – of serious wildfire smoke here on the Island, but these winds had blown this lot up the coast from the fires in Washington State (and elsewhere) that you may have read about on the news. Not good – and those with chest ailments were particularly unhappy.
The good things with winds, however, is that they just keep right on a-blowin’… Come this evening the view from our window had reverted to that of Sunday evening.
Thank goodness for that – say I! (With apologies – of course – to those of you who are still under the cloud!).
Tags: Vancouver Island, Vista, Weather, wildfires
Winter lingered so long in the lap of Spring that it occasioned a great deal of talk.
Bill Nye
It has, of late, been particularly wet here on the west coast coast of Canada. Not in the catastrophic flooding/exceptional weather kind of way that some other regions of the world have been suffering, but just a constant and relentless dampness from day to day. The aquifers are doubtless happy – as are the ducks – but as for the rest of us… not so much!
Further, even on days such as today – when the sun has decided to peep through the murk and the temperature has climbed to something approaching acceptability for human life – come eventide it will have again plummeted towards the red (or should that be blue) zone and the nights remain consistently chilly.
As a result our early spring flowers have been caught in two minds as to whether or not to grace us with their bloomin’ presence. The snowdrops have done their thing regardless – but then, that is what snowdrops do.
The daffodils and tulips – on the other hand – have poked their heads out, formed buds and then just stopped… unwilling to burst fully into bloom until the sun comes out in a more meaningful way to provide some proper spring warmth. My worry is that they will just eventually give up without ever bursting properly into flower.
The glorious magnolia featured in these photos is at the college at which I teach. Hopefully this will act as an exemplar to our own rather more timid flora.
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:
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!”
The first thing that came into most people’s minds (of those to whom I divulged our impending move to Canada some five years ago) was the thought of the Canadian winter – as though that somehow defined the country. Further, it was reasonably clear that their preconceptions ran primarily to winter sports. Maybe in the back of their minds they conjured up this sort of image:
Now – of course – Canadians don’t exactly always go out of their way to discourage this sort of stereotype and it does have to be said that in parts of the land there is a fair bit of winter to be had.
But not so here on the Wet… pardon me… West coast. Our winters tend to look more like this:
Nice weather for the ducks – though the cormorants don’t look so impressed. These photos were taken today in Sidney by the Sea on the umpteenth (seemingly) day of apocalyptic gloom and ceaseless and torrential rain.
With us right through Christmas apparently!
Still – a good excuse to stay indoors and snuggle up…
Tags: British Columbia, Photo, Weather, winter
Down in Sidney-by-the-Sea today was a somewhat blustery day. As may be deduced from a quick look at the accompanying map:
…the Saanich peninsula (on which Sidney occupies a small but growing area near the top and to the eastern side) is fairly well protected from any of the worst of the wild winter winds that might wreak havoc out in the Georgia Strait by the archipelago that comprises the Gulf Islands (Canada) to the north and the San Juan Islands (USA) to the south. As a result the seas in the Haro Strait and particularly in Bazan Bay tend to be placid and even millpond-like on balmy summer days.
There are days however – in winter – when the wind comes directly off the water and the clouds scud in from the open sea. Then – even in the early afternoon – it looks more like this:
Tags: British Columbia, Vancouver Island, Weather, winter
…back at the ranch!
Well – I have posted a good number of missives since we returned to Canada in June – most of which concerned our recent trip to Europe. As a result I have been somewhat guilty of late of neglecting to keep the gentle reader up to date with the summer’s going on here at the southern end of Vancouver Island.
Time to catch up!
Weather-wise this has been a mixed summer thus far. There have been good days and there have been overcast, chilly days. There has not been much rain, however, so the garden has needed help.
I really liked this ‘end of the rainbow’…
Nothing has deterred us from lunching at ‘The Farmer’s Daughter’ – where they do a splendid plate of charcuterie and a decent variety of wine flights:
…or indeed from walking in Centennial Park:
We have also been regular attendees – as ever – at the Brentwood Bay ‘Music in the Park’ on Wednesday evenings and – though the temperatures have occasionally been on the nippy side and the winds blustered more than strictly necessary – we have enjoyed ourselves.
Note the detail from above. No sense in wasting good spinning time!
It’s a West Coast thing…
It is my habit, at this time of year, to post to this journal selected images of verdurous nature – in particular in that form which it takes in our garden. I do this, of course, to show off just how splendid is life in this balmy coastal paradise at the time of year at which spring bursts forth in all its glory.
The absence of such images this year is telling… telling mostly of the near six weeks for which parts of our estate were buried under a foot or two of snow.
Now, nature is no mug – having been around this loop any number of times in the past – and simply slammed on the brakes, burying its head (in a hideous clashing of metaphors) until such time as things warmed up again on the climate front.
Well – that time is now and all is thus once again kicking off as per usual – but it is, of course, now late, late, late…
…and not only late: there is the distinct air of all of our growing things having taken a bit of a battering during that icy sojourn. No doubt all will recover in time but we really do need some nice sunshine to help things on their way, in place of the current cloudy/rainy/chilly weather that seems to have become a fixture here in recent days.
Ah well – ‘tis only April and these things often don’t pick up properly until May, the which they will doubtless do just in time for us to head for Europe. Ah well…
The dogwood and magnolia trees at least are in bloom and looking good!
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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