…with apologies to those gentle readers who don’t have the good fortune to live in Victoria BC (or are currently holidaying in Mexico!)…
Click the images for the big picture!
It’s the second week of January. Must be time to take the boat for a spin!
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“…and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!”
‘King Lear’ – William Shakespeare
The first serious storm of the season ripped its way across the southern end of Vancouver Island yesterday afternoon – tearing dead wood and fresh young fronds alike from the trees, decimating the power grid and scattering bins and other appurtenances to the four corners of the earth…
It certainly seemed that way!
We lost a number of large branches from the trees that border our garden and our power was out for a little over five hours – fortunately being restored at around 5 pm just as it got dark (which it does here later than in the south of England at this time of year).
We were lucky that we got off lightly. The BC Hydro (our power provider) website shows that – 24 hours later – the southern end of the island is still subject to 256 outages affecting 33,777 customers. Our friends in Saanichton did not get their power back until midnight – by which time they were already fast asleep!
Reports suggest that the storm was quite the worst seen in the area for some seven to eight years. Tragically, one person was killed by a falling tree. BC Ferries cancelled 130 sailings on 14 routes and the ferry dock on Penelakut Island was severely damaged. On the mainland a man had to be rescued by helicopter after becoming stranded when the wooden pier at White Rock was broken in two by boats that had been torn from their moorings.
It is the norm in this neck of the woods for the winter storms to start – and indeed to be at their most severe – during November. That did not happen this year (November being particularly mild) which may well be yet another sign of the world’s weather systems being seriously out of kilter.
Bizarrely, however much damage did result the winds proved insufficient to blow away some of the less attractive inflatable Christmas decorations which ‘grace’ front gardens in this part of the peninsula!
Make of that what you will…
There are those – particularly across the pond – who think that if it is winter – and if it is Canada – then it must be snowing!
To be fair, some Canadians (though somewhat less on the West Coast) do little to disabuse outsiders of such views.
Here on the island the closing months of the year are far more likely to look like… well – like this:
Here in Canada the weekend that has passed was Thanksgiving – and thus a holiday or long weekend.
There are – in British Columbia – five national and five provincial statutory holidays, plus Easter Monday – which is a bank holiday (statutory for government employees only) and Boxing Day (which is not actually a stat holiday but is widely observed).
By comparison public holidays in the UK vary from eight (for England) to eleven (for Northern Ireland).
One fact that is indisputable is that public holidays here in BC are more evenly distributed throughout the year than are the UK equivalents – and certainly the English ones (two holidays in May – nothing until the end of August!)
One other seemingly inescapable ‘fact’ is that if there is to be bank holiday in the UK it is probably also going to rain. Now – statistically this probably isn’t actually the case, though it is true that the English weather stats do demonstrate that the end of August is a particularly poor choice of time for a day off, given that the rainfall then is often greater than it is during equivalent periods in the winter months.
However, one need only feed Google the inquiry “Does it always rain on bank holidays?” to be left in no doubt at all that as far as the English are concerned the answer is resoundingly in the affirmative.
It hardly need be said – I feel – that though the weather here has been reasonably good of late and the sun is shining once again as I write – over the holiday weekend itself the clouds scudded in and it rained steadily and determinedly throughout.
This expat felt right at home!
“The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfillment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.”
Helen Garner
There is something to be said for living in a land with a reliable climate (though I naturally make an exception for those parts of the UK that are oppressed mercilessly by lowering clouds throughout the drudgery of the winter months).
It is interesting to contrast the climates of London and Victoria. Wikipedia reveals the following:
- London has some 1633 hours of sunshine per annum.
- Victoria has some 2193 hours of sunshine per annum.
- London averages 602 mm of rain per annum.
- Victoria averages 608 mm of rain per annum.
Though rainfall figures are not dissimilar and average monthly temperatures are within a degree of each other (though London’s slightly warmer weather often feels muggy as a result of the humidity), Victoria’s extra five hundred or so hours of sunshine a year clearly make a difference. Though there are times during the Victorian spring when one wonders if the rain will ever stop – cease it invariably does, giving way reliably to glorious mild, sunny and dry summer months.
Sometimes too dry!
Then – toward the end of the season and just as it seems that the drought has set in permanently and the garden sprinklers are on the verge of giving up the unequal struggle to maintain life in the yard – the weather will break and verdancy is restored.
Sometimes this happens with a bang rather than a whimper:
…but sometimes equally the end result is the most incandescent of rainbows:
Flurries, they said… flurries!
Fair enough – it is the last week in February and we have not thus far – at the southern end of this fair isle – seen any snow at all (unless we missed some whilst away in Mexico!)… but I for one was certainly not expecting this little lot! I thought the only white stuff we were going to see was via the big screen from South Korea…
Oh well! I feel sure that spring is just around the corner…
Tags: British Columbia, Photo, Weather, winter
For the past twelve days the Georgia Strait and surrounding areas have been enveloped in a miasma of smoke from the wildfires (to which I made reference in this earlier post) which are still ablaze in the BC interior. The image at the head of this missive (and at the top of my last post) give an idea of the impact that this effluvium has had.
There have been mornings on which my customary first gaze out of the windows has given the rapid impression of a seriously hazy day, only for the realisation to dawn that the layer of vapour was not the result of any early morning micro-climatic condition, but rather a dense layer of smog lying immovably atop the sea.
The more northerly view from our deck normally reveals Moresby Island, with the higher Pender Island pair behind. On a clear day we can see further – all the way to the mountains behind the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver. The more southerly view stretches out across Sidney Island to the American San Juan islands beyond – and then all the way to distant Mount Baker.
For the last several weeks it has been just about possible to make out Sidney Island, but even Moresby has occasionally disappeared into the murk, leaving only the Little Group visible in the immediate foreground.
It really has all been quite depressing.
The reason that this cloud of noxious fumes has hung low over the sea (and of course over Greater Vancouver and beyond) for so long is that a ridge of high pressure became wedged over the BC coast – depriving the region of the usual cleansing zephyrs that should have dissipated the pollutant.
Finally, yesterday (Saturday), the weather system began once again slowly to move, the winds changed direction and – as if by magic – the banks of smoke dissolved, leaving ‘not a rack behind’. The sun renewed its efforts and Mount Baker became once again illuminated by the late afternoon glow.
Then, as an evening of croquet and good cheer in the garden with our dear friends from Saanichton entered its twilight phase, the first rains for nearly two months began gently to fall.
Today the world (this part of it at least) is a different place!
Tags: British Columbia, Friends, Gardens, Weather, wildfires
Smoke from wildfires in the BC interior hangs heavily over the Malahat mountain opposite Brentwood Bay on Tuesday night.
2017 is already one of the worst years for wildfires in recent times and the situation is expected to deteriorate further as the province heads into a heatwave over the next few days, with temperatures soaring into the high 30’s Celsius in places.
More than 800 fires have been tackled since April 1st – of which some 138 are still active and currently being fought by around 3,700 firefighters. Additional firefighters from other provinces are joining the battle as well as – for the first time – more than one hundred from Mexico.
Whereas the early part of the year was marked by above average rainfall (with records for precipitation set in Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria during March) it has not now rained in Victoria since the middle of June.
No sign of Mount Baker either…
Tags: British Columbia, Weather, wildfires
“Sweet April showers do spring May flowers”
Thomas Tusser
Well – this winter has turned out to have been endowed with a drearily long tail here in British Columbia. Once the snows and ice had cleared and the winds had receded we all scampered each morning to our windows to gaze expectantly out at the big wide world without, hoping to welcome a glorious springtime. Instead the temperatures remained stubbornly low and the rain fronts continued to sweep in relentlessly from the Pacific.
There are at last – however – signs that the weather is about to pick up now that May is here. In any case the garden (yard!) has decided that it can wait no longer and is starting to burst out in all of its verdant glory. These vernal blooms – and many others – are greeted joyously…
Tags: British Columbia, Fuji x10, Photo, Spring, Weather
“It’s kind of like doing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. We had pieces and parts flying everywhere. It turned out in our favor. We’ve just got to clean it up the next time around.”
Mike Leach – football coach
I have made reference before in these reflections to the fact that in this part of the world our mains power arrives courtesy of cables strung between tall wooden poles. It is, in fact, not just the power that does so – phone lines, cable television and broadband data circuits are all delivered by the same means, using the same poles. As may be observed in the attached illustration this frequently results in an extensive cat’s-cradle of cables which runs the length of every rural thoroughfare.
The adoption of this delivery mechanism does, of course, make perfect sense. The distances concerned and the lumpy terrain mitigate against the burial of such services, on grounds of cost and practicality, and the ready availability on all sides of tall straight poles makes the chosen solution what is, I believe, oft referred to as a ‘no-brainer’.
The downside – as I have certainly mentioned before – is that the winter winds have a habit of bringing down the branches of neighbouring trees onto said power lines, resulting in outages at just the point that electricity and other cable-borne services would come in particularly handy – for heating, cooking, watching TV and surfing in the InterWebNet and suchlike.
By way of amelioration of this regular occurrence the provincial power company – BC Hydro – engages each spring a clutch of trouble-shooting tree specialists who are briefed to roam the byways looking for potential problems that might be averted by means of a little chainsaw butchery. Any tree branch that so much as glances in the direction of a power line is immediately whacked off and ground up into sawdust.
Thus is was that – one day last week – a sizeable swarm of trucks, pickups, cherry pickers and suchlike descended locust-like onto the verge outside our residence. The sound of chainsaws and chippers being fired up rent what might otherwise have been a sleepy afternoon. Half an hour later they departed like a swarm of angry wasps looking for another target, having committed an act of savagery on our lovely Arbutus and left an integument of detritus beneath it.
On being appraised of this visit The Girl wondered (somewhat provocatively) whether our neighbours might have ‘shopped’ us to the power company. The Arbutus is a beautiful tree but has the unusual distinction of shedding its foliage in the summer months whilst remaining resolutely verdant throughout the winter. One afternoon last summer – as our dear friend from Saanichton was helping us to widen our driveway in anticipation of the arrival of the good ship ‘Dignity’ – the little old lady from next door sidled up to me and enquired hopefully as to whether we were having the tree chopped down.
When I told her that we were not she looked most disappointed!
Tags: British Columbia, Spring, Weather
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