Tag Archives: weather

Barometric Pressure Headaches

2 Replies

Yesterday there was a drop in barometric pressure. I know this because I felt it in my head. Since I was a teenager I’ve been susceptible to getting headaches due to barometric pressure changes. That said, they really don’t happen often, and I am still surprised by them. I don’t think to blame the weather for the low grade headache that I develop from a drop in atmospheric pressure.

Yesterday morning I was at my desk and the pain grew as I tried to look at my computer screen. I needed to give my eyes a break and as I walked out of my office I mentioned to my secretaries that I had a headache. One of my secretaries instantly replied, “I feel it too, it’s the weather.” And only hearing this and looking out the window at the grey skies helped me realize what I was dealing with. Even though I don’t get a lot of headaches, it just seems odd to me that this happens and so I don’t draw conclusions or throw blame on a weather change for how I feel.

Looking at the historical data now, there was indeed a big drop in pressure yesterday.

Of all the skills and abilities I could possibly have, detecting atmospheric pressure drops with a headache is not one I can say I’m grateful for. I felt ‘off’ the whole day, and left work not convinced I’d be up to going to work today.

But it’s a new day, there is a rising barometer in the forecast, and I am headache free after a good night’s sleep. Yesterday was a blip, (or perhaps a better word is dip), and I will be blissfully ignorant of the barometer until the next big drop. And if I’m true to form, I’ll draw the conclusion that the weather is the cause of my headache well after I should have made the connection. It just seems like a really weird place to throw blame.

Get out the shovel

Leave a reply

I’m not doing my usual exercise this morning. Instead, Ill be heading out to shovel my driveway as my morning physical activity. After spending months with a herniated disc last year, I don’t plan on pushing myself with a weights workout before tackling the snow. I already know that I’ll be continuing with the shovelling when I get to school this morning too.

I’m not a fan of the snow, I make that pretty clear quite often. I am a warm blooded Bajan who would rather sweat than feel chilled any day. But I don’t mind shovelling snow. I put on a lot of layers of clothing. I also put on headphones and listen to a podcast and get into a rhythm where the work becomes a series of meditative motions. I even like the sound of the shovel scraping against the ground. And finally, it’s rewarding to see what you’ve accomplished.

I don’t think I’d like it as much if it snowed every day, but where I live I end up shovelling snow a maximum of 10 days in a year… usually a little less than that. So, I’ll get the shovel out and plug away without complaint, and admittedly, I’ll kind of enjoy it… And I just found out it’s a district wide snow day! I still have to get myself to school, but everyone else gets the day to stay at home… that’s ok, too. I hope to get a lot done today… after the shovelling!

 

into the dark

Leave a reply

I drove home from work well after dark last night. It’s 7am and it’s pitch black outside. I saw the sun out my window yesterday just before lunch, and that was the only natural light I really saw for the day. At least we could see the sun, there were quite a few days last week where you didn’t know where in the sky the sun was, because the cloud cover was too heavy.

I know I left Barbados at the young age of 9. I know that most of my life has been spent with winter days being short and dark. Still, I just can’t get used to it. I want to live somewhere that the shortest day of the year is still over 11 hours. Yes, it got dark shortly after dinner every day in Barbados. Yes, that’s a stark difference from summer nights here, when we can still see the sun in the sky after 9pm. But that consistency of seeing the sun every day, the wonderful experience of having it be bright and clear… and warm… every morning, this is something I wish I had.

I don’t think I’d ever end up living full time anywhere except Canada, but when I retire I’m going to do my best not to be in the dark for January and February. I am going to seek out holidays that are filled with long, bright, warm days. These short, cold, dark winter days are really not my thing.

Standstill

Leave a reply

The snow came later than expected. The temperature drop was expected, but the timing was perfect to create chaos in a city with limited snow removal capability.

I live on a hill, and last night my wife and I couldn’t get home. She spent hours stuck in traffic. I was at work quite late and when I left I made 3 attempts to get up the hill. The first and third attempts were blocked by firefighters, redirecting traffic away from the hill. The second attempt involved watching cars slide down two different hills that I was forced to avoid, finally finding my way back down to the main road my school is on.

I did a u-turn at the last attempt and ended up going to a Pho restaurant a block from my school for a warm, slow dinner. Then the main hill that I use going directly up from my school was open and I had an uneventful drive home. That’s not nearly as bad an experience as my wife being in the car for over 3 hours, mostly standing still and waiting, and finally having to go several kilometres out of her way to approach our house from the opposite end.

Still, we were more lucky than the cars that slid uncontrollably into each other on some of the hills we couldn’t get up. (That’s the hill that would have been my 4th attempt to go up, had I not u-turned and headed back to my school).

Our neighbourhood is very hilly, and we end up having events like this once or twice a year. What brings our city to a standstill though is not snow, it’s ice. It’s conditions where the snow comes, it gets compacted by cars, and then the temperature fluctuates above then below zero to liquify and then refreeze the compacted snow into sheets of ice. Hills, ice, and traffic don’t play well together.

This morning I won’t be trying to drive down the hill I came up last night. I’ll drive over to the main road that I know will be cleared since it is a major artery for traffic… (even though that’s the hill that had the most havoc last night). I’ll get to work earlier than usual and make sure the parking lot is safe. But I’m lucky that my school is on the bottom of the hill, closer to the river, and likely not as icy and snow-covered as some of our schools that get much more snow than us. Hopefully the chaos of last night is over.

Winter blues

Leave a reply

It’s still 17 days away to the shortest day of the year, but we are already at the point of seeing almost no sun outside of working hours. This is a time of year that I really wished I lived somewhere closer to the equator. It’s not just a trip to the shortest day, it’s also a trip to cold, wet, and sometimes snowy days for the next couple months.

This is when routines really matter, when motivation to exercise is really low, but the exercise itself is more important than ever. This is when eating well is challenging with Christmas festivities, and time off work for the winter break becomes an easy time to break your fitness and eating routine.

I’ve tried a new routine of writing at night so as not to squeeze my morning routine, but I didn’t really develop the habit and I’m back to writing in the morning. Except on weekends. Weekends are already slower and I haven’t written my posts on a weekend morning in weeks. Thus, I know the holidays will be a challenge to maintain my habits.

It’s a really busy week ahead, and I’ll be home late most nights. It will feel like besides my morning routine, the only things on my agenda are work and sleep… and dark, rainy, gloomy skies… and the cold. Yuck.

I need to remember to find moments of joy at work and at home. I need to make sure I’m eating well and taking my vitamins. And most of all, I need to remember that before I realize it, spring will be here. Every year seems shorter, faster, and so winter will be but a distant memory soon enough… the trick is finding, no creating, memories of this winter beyond the darkness, wet, and cold.

As my coffee mug says, “What a great day it is today!”

Getting outside

Leave a reply

I went for my Coquitlam Crunch walk this morning at 8am. Last night it poured rain and it was unexpectedly wonderful to have a dry walk with clear skies, and it didn’t even drizzle until we were done our walk and in the warmth of a coffee shop. I went for a hot tub afterwards and while misty rain fell it certainly didn’t rain on my experience.

Getting outside is so important this time of year. It can be really hard when I’m driving to work in gloomy darkness and driving home in nighttime darkness. When I spend all sunlit hours at work, the desire to be outside is far less than on summer days when it can still be bright out after 9pm.

So it’s wonderful to have a reason to be outside during the weekend. I also need to remind myself that I can go on evening walks with my wife mid-week and neither darkness nor rain need stop us. The lack of sunlight and added likelihood of rain are not conspiring against us, it’s just the way things are this time of year on this part of our globe.

So, whether it’s a walk, or a hot tub, or even sweeping leaves off the driveway, it’s good to remember the value of getting outside. We don’t need to stay cooped up indoors just because the days are shorter and wetter.

Here comes the rain

Leave a reply

Living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, I miss the rainy season in Barbados. When the rainy season hits on this tropical island, it meant a morning rainstorm with water droplets the size of coins soaking you in seconds, followed by the cloud cover passing you and the rain stopping almost instantly. After that there was 20-30 minutes of uncomfortable humidity as the hot sun evaporated the rainwater. Maybe this would happen again later, but often it wasn’t until the next day.

Occasionally you’d get a cloudy, cool day that lasted the whole day with intermittent rainfall, but there might only be 5-10 days like that the whole season. Maybe I’m underplaying it, after all I was 9 when I left, but I remember a rainy season I could easily handle.

Today was a reminder that BC rain is nothing like that. I spent over an hour outside in misty rain, putting our above ground pool away. It was damp, and there was a constant drizzle or mist. It was gloomy. There was hardly a time during the day that I could tell you where the sun was due to the heavy cloud cover… And the season is just starting.

The worst two months of weather here are usually November and February. But the gloominess starts now. I’ll make the most of the grey days to come, even heading to and from work in the dark. I’ll continue to take my Vitamin D, and I’ll use my sunlight desk lamp at school. But I have to admit that I’d take the rainy season in Barbados any time over the rainy season in Vancouver.

wind and waves

Leave a reply

If you ask most people what causes waves they will tell you the gravitational pull of the moon. While that is the reason for the tides, the most common cause of waves is… wind. On my hike yesterday it was quite windy and I got to see the wind ‘playing’ on the surface of the water.

I also remember seeing dust devils, mini tornados, on my many adventures through the southern states with my dad. And I once saw a water spout off the coast of Jeju Island in Korea. 

It’s fascinating to see the power of the wind. Harnessed, it can generate power. It can also be devastatingly destructive.

But looking at the way wind travels along the surface of water, creating waves, is mesmerizing. I love to watch it dance and control the water, with the wind taking the lead and the water following along at the leader’s whim. But to say the water is ‘following’ the wind is a misnomer.

animation of people doing the stadium wave

animation of a longitudinal displacement wave pulse traveling through a tube filled with molecules

Like fans doing the wave in a stadium, the water itself does not travel with the wind, but rather as a disturbance traveling through the water. A beautiful disturbance. A dance of wind and waves. In a way, tides and waves are the dance of the sun and moon. The moon influences the tides and the sun unevenly heats the earth creating wind. So the dance of wind on water is a dance of sun and moon, of heat and gravity, of power and beauty.

Wacky weather

I’m back in Vancouver and went for my 8am walk with my buddy, Dave, up the Coquitlam Crunch this morning. It was slushy midway up and snowing at the top. Later in the day it snowed at my house.

Now, at shortly after 5pm, it’s gorgeous, sunny, and warm. It’s a beautiful spring day. That’s what you get in the Pacific North West near the mountains.

There are days when I’m scraping the frost off of my car in the morning, windshield wipers are going full speed at lunch due to rain, and I’ve got the air conditioner on or windows down in the late afternoon. I’m don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this wacky weather, it’s like experiencing completely different days within one day. It’s just wacky!

Online rather than cancelled

It started to snow massive snowflakes just before 3pm. I looked at the forecast and after a lull at 5pm there was a good chance of the snow continuing to fall for a few hours. Our school is at the lowest end of the city, not far from the Fraser River, and so when it’s snowing here, it’s a lot worse elsewhere… including at my house only 3.5 kilometres away.

We had a Parent Advisory Council (PAC) meeting scheduled for 7pm. I called my PAC Chair and she and I decided to move the meeting online, rather than hybrid as we’ve offered the rest of this year.

I sent a quick email out and we made the switch. Turnout was similar to when we have the meeting blended… and no one had to drive in our hilly city where snow ploughing doesn’t always happen in a timely manner. As it turned out, the snow wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and we probably could have held the meeting at the school. However, it could easily have been bad enough to cause issues for parents coming to and leaving the meeting.

Five years ago we would have either kept the meeting as planned with a poor turnout, or postponed the meeting. The idea of hosting the meeting online would not have been something we would have considered. But last night it was ‘business as usual’ with a full agenda and everyone meeting from the comfort or their homes.

A few weeks back I was in a meeting that someone was stuck in traffic for, and he listened in from his car. Before that, I was home with a bad cough, and was still able to join in remotely for a meeting that I really wanted to attend. It’s interesting how practices can change in a relatively short time. This can also have negative consequences, like expecting someone to join a meeting remotely even when sick or on vacation (not just by expectation, but also from a sense of obligation). But it can also be extremely convenient, saving hours of transportation time. I’m running a meeting on Friday and while 12 principals from across the province will be meeting at my school, most will come from nearby, and another 8 will join us online, saving themselves from ferry and plane trips, or from very long drives.

There is real value in meeting face-to-face and online meetings can be void of that connection you have in a physical meeting… but the convenience of meeting online is pretty amazing, and when it comes to things like inclement weather, a switch to remote instead of cancelling is a pretty good option!