Today’s forecast…

…Holy Moley – I can’t feel my face degrees!

The winter weather is doing its bit to make the run in to Christmas something of a challenge! Notice that I didn’t qualify that with: “Here on the west coast of Canada“. I am well aware that we are not alone in experiencing exceptional climatic conditions. We have had quite a lot to do of late (as of course have many people at this time of year) and needing to keep a constant eye on the weather only makes things more exacting.

Here are some ‘highlights’ – complete with pictures:

Last weekend we made a overnight trip up island to Nanaimo – for a Christmas visit with The Girl’s mum – stopping on the way back on the Sunday for lunch with a dear friend in Duncan. As ever we took the Mill Bay ferry to avoid traversing the Malahat (always a good idea when there is snow in the air).

We figured that the snow would start to fall at some point during this trip and sure enough it did – whilst we were in Nanaimo. We stayed overnight in the Coast Bastion hotel overlooking Nanaimo harbour – with which we are very familiar from previous visits.

We had a lovely visit with both family and friends – dined splendidly at the Nanaimo Golf Club, the Minnoz restaurant at the Coast Bastion – and, of course, with our lovely friend in Duncan. Happy Christmas to you all.

Once back in Victoria the winter storm really swept in and soon everything disappeared under about a foot of snow. This was the view from my studio window by Tuesday.

The Girl had taken most of the week off as well-earned pre-Christmas break, but the weather put paid to any notions of a relaxing run in to the festival itself. The Volunteer Agency of which The Girl is one of the mainstays delivers meals to elderly folk every week – with teams of volunteers driving routes around Greater Victoria to make deliveries to more than seventy locations. Given the weather it would have been totally unreasonable to expect these excellent volunteers – many of them elderly themselves – to be out on the roads in such treacherous conditions. It fell to a number of us folk with 4x4s equipped with snow tyres to get the food parcels out to the elderly in time for Christmas. This is – of course – is just the sort of thing at which Lorelei excels and she did not let us down. Here we are en route…

I guess the big question now is – will we get a white Christmas? Today is the 23rd and temperatures are starting to rise – though to this point they have only reached the ‘freezing rain on top of compacted snow‘ phase – so today we are going nowhere! We will see how things pan out tomorrow.