Tag Archives: weather

Shovelling Snow

I remember I time when I didn’t know what snow was. Sure, I’d seen it on TV, but it didn’t make any sense. I grew up on a tropical island and a party-sized block of ice was the largest concept I had for something cold that didn’t sit inside of a fridge or freezer.

My first snowfall (except for a spattering of sleet) was a cartoonishly slow snowfall of giant flakes that made me question how real the world was.

That was Grade 5. By Grade 9 I was absolutely done with snow and knew I was not going to live in Toronto the rest of my life. When I came to Vancouver as a water polo coach in ’93, I knew that I was going to move here, and leave Toronto and the snow behind.

Well, I didn’t quite leave it behind, and this morning I was shovelling my driveway (for the third day in a row) before 6am. But it was quite enjoyable. I had my headphones in, listening to a book, the only other sound being my shovel against the driveway. At one point my mind drifted to what I was actually doing:

Snow falls and gets in the way of our daily living. We take shovels and move it aside. It then melts away, with no indication that it was ever there. Snow falls…

I’m reminded of this silly gif of a man shovelling water and tossing back into the same puddle.

I’m also reminded of how we are at the whim of nature. This year in BC we’ve had forest fires and torrential rains that have completely affected our lives with road closures and damaged homes, even loss of life. The raw power of the natural forces around us is incredible.

And, in this part of the world, we have snow. White fluffy stuff that falls and gets in our way. Sometimes, like the fires and floods, it can wreak havoc, other times it is a mild inconvenience… and we scurry around moving it out of the way with shovels, then we watch it melt away.

Fall colours

I just came back from a walk with my daughter. We passed this tree and I had to stop and take a photo:

Growing up in the Caribbean, I have to say that the explosion of fall colours was as captivating as experiencing snow for the first time. We moved to Toronto (North York) and the main highway downtown is the Don Valley Parkway, which follows the Don River lowlands and is surrounded by trees. This time of year the drive is breathtaking.

Seeing this tree brought back memories of seeing fall leaves for the first time and thinking that there was no way these colours were from real trees. It’s amazing that so many vibrant colours can stem from the death of leaves. Fall is here, enjoy the weather, and beautiful scenery, because winter is coming.

Here comes the rain

It’s dumping outside this morning. That will happen when you live on the edge of a rain forest. It will happen a lot more as we creep into November, which is probably the wettest month in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, or maybe that’s February? The point is, we are heading into a whole lot of wet in the next while.

But today I have a walk up the Coquitlam Crunch trail planned with a friend, and we have a goal to do this trail once a week, at least 34 times, this school year. Today will be #3.

https://youtu.be/oMRU28bY14I

That will mean a lot of hikes in the rain. While it’s less than 30 minutes to the top, it’s almost an hour long. That’s long enough that if you aren’t dressed appropriately you are going to get soggy and cold. And I hate being cold!

So, I’ll bundle up, get sweaty in too many layers, and be happy to be outside with my buddy. Because when you live where we live, you either go outside and get wet, or you coop yourself up inside for several months of the year. It’s time to get wet…

Fire and rain

Today on highway 5 my daughter and I saw a plane drop fire retardant (red coloured) water on the hill closest to the highway. There were multiple spots along the closest ridge and hill to our right where we could see smouldering trees. Then we headed into a section of highway where we couldn’t distinguish smoke from fog, and a light misty rain covered our windshield.

We are used to rain in BC, but it has been much too dry and the fires have been out of control. Seeing one of the fires so close to the highway followed by raindrops made me realize how little control we m have over nature. Many fires in BC are not contained, they are forcing evacuations, and endangering lives. It’s one thing to deal with the inconvenience of smoke from a distant fire and yet another to face the flames.

With so many fires burning in BC, it’s a joy to see some rain, and I find myself hoping for much more of it.

A Province on Fire

Yesterday we drove the almost 8 hours from the Vancouver Lower Mainland to Nelson BC. On the way we went through Princeton. Heading into the city, the smell of smoke and haziness was the worst part of the trip.

Heading into Osoyoos, we could see the smoking fires in the ridge above the city.

And after arriving in Nelson, I took this photo at 7:15pm on a short walk.

My wife’s parents were supposed to join us in this quaint city that they spent most of their lives, but they changed their mind due to air quality concerns. Instead, they are vacationing at our house while we are here. Smelling the air this morning, I think they made a good choice.

The reality is that we are a province on fire.

Our record heat wave in late June, followed by freaky rainless lightning storms, then an unusually dry July have made our province a forest full of kindling, ready to go up in smoke. According to the B.C. Wildfire Dashboard right now there are 259 wildfires in BC, and 11 are new in the last 2 days.

We are not doing our planned hike this morning, instead we’ll walk along the lake. We’ll visit old stomping grounds of my wife’s youth, and we’ll probably spend a bit more time indoors than planned.

Still, we are lucky. We are safe, and so is our house. We don’t have an evacuation warning, and we aren’t worried about what to pack and what to leave behind should we have to flee our home. This is the case for many across our province.

It’s usual to be hoping for rain in the summer, but our entire province could use a good soaking, complements of Mother Nature. Rain and low winds are on the minds of many in our province, as forest fires sit on the minds of many of us. It’s hard not to think of them as you peer across hazy horizons and smell the fires burning.

Heat wave

It’s supposed to get to 41°C (105.8°F) today. Yesterday was already a scorcher, but today will break records. I think our new above ground pool will get some use today after work, and I’m thankful that we have small window air conditioning units in our bedrooms, that we put in for just a few months a year.

Our district wisely cancelled school for students, because almost none of our schools have air conditioning and wearing a mask in a sweltering hot room with many others would be unbearable. I know my office will be uncomfortable, but I’ll probably move myself and my secretaries to a room that isn’t south facing with windows being in the sun all day.

I wonder how many more of these heat waves we’ll be getting in the coming years? Is this a blip or the start of a pattern? Global temperatures are rising, and we might have to get used to this… not that 41° is something anyone gets used to… it’s a temperature that you tolerate, moving from one artificially cool space to another.

Stay inside and stay cool.

The longest day

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s hard to believe that today is the longest day of the year.

When the shortest day comes on December 21st, I’m ready for the days to get longer. It’s dark early and it feels like the right time to swing the pendulum back, and to start seeing more daylight. But June 21st seems too early in the summer to be at the maximum daylight length.

School is still in session, and the entire summer holiday is ahead of us. In my head the long, bright days of summer are just approaching. But every day from now until next December will get a little shorter.

There are reasons why the dead of winter is delayed until after the shortest day of the year, and why summer is hottest after the longest day… but intuitively it doesn’t make a lot of sense. This day just seems to come too early in the year. This timing does explain why the summer solstice was such an important event to pre-industrial humans. This is the day that leads to a bountiful summer, when the sun provides the greatest rewards. It’s a time when all crops have been planted and many early crops will already be ready, and ripe for picking. And so there is enough food for a feast, and the hard work of caring for crops and harvesting are ahead.

Now, the solstice is just an interesting fact, rather than a big celebration. But I always look forward to the summer and winter solstice. The winter solstice because it’s nice to think of each day getting longer as the winter approaches. The summer solstice because the whole summer lies ahead. So, while many don’t think of this day as special, I do.

A little context

A couple days ago I wrote this about a heavy 3am rainfall that woke me up:

“The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.”

In a video chat my dad said he read it and said that it brought back memories for him too. My youngest daughter joined me on the phone and he asked if she had read it, she hadn’t. So he went on to ask if she knew the sound of rain on a galvanized roof. She didn’t know what that was. Then, like me, he went on to describe a corrugated metal roof. I said, she probably doesn’t know what that is either… she didn’t.

We have an aluminum roof on our current house, so a metal roof isn’t an unknown thing, but a loud, uninsulated, galvanized, corrugated metal roof is not something common to Canada. It is something a tropical islander would know all too well.

Here is a video sharing the sound of ‘heavy rain’ falling on a galvanized, corrugated metal roof:

https://youtu.be/VDu-YwKJ2uA

While the video description says ‘heavy rain’, this sounds quite gentle. It’s a sound of a constant flow. Often as a kid, when the sound of rain on a roof woke me up during the night, it would be an intense and truly heavy rain attacking the roof that would wake me. It would settle to the sound in the video, but imagine a louder, more violent version of this thundering above as a passing storm went by.

It was interesting to realize that the experience I was describing could connect my dad to a shared experience, but the same description meant nothing to my daughter. It made me realize that I was sharing a contextual experience that not everyone has had. Furthermore, here in Vancouver, while it rains a lot, the rain just isn’t the same as in Barbados.

The Bajan rains come fast and are intense, and leave as quickly as they come. Here in Vancouver it can drizzle for hours. In Barbados when it rains you stay under cover because you know it will stop soon, and a 15 second walk from your car to inside would leave you drenched like you went into the shower with your clothes on. Here in Vancouver, it rains far more often and I never carry an umbrella. For most rainfalls here, I don’t even think about covering my head when I walk in the rain for a minute. Rain here is not rain everywhere.

I’m reminded of the Inuit having several terms for snow, while we just call it snow. And that some cultures can’t distinguish between blue and green, because they don’t have a term for blue, but they also see shades of green that we can’t distinguish or tell apart. Our contexts growing up shape us. And our experiences don’t always create a shared understanding. To me a corrugated, galvanized roof is a musical instrument played by rain, to others it is an unfamiliar sound.

Torrential Rain

At about 3am this morning I was awoken by the sound of torrential rain. It was bouncing off of our roof with such force that it seemed to be attacking it. It’s all at once a threatening and comforting sound. It makes me feel happy to be under warm covers, rather than outside being pelted by heavy, biting bullets of water.

The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.

If the rain came as I was falling asleep, I would fight sleep just to be up and hear the chorus of raindrops drumming the roof. If it came while I slept, it would wake me from sheer loudness, yet I wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to hear the rain stop.

Last night was a reminder of these childhood memories. It is fascinating to me that such a violent sound could be so satisfying to listen to. Lying in bed, protected by the ceiling above, a torrential rain is a musical interlude rather than a scary interruption of sleep.

“Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory.”

It is a reminder of my childhood, a sound that evokes fond memories of growing up on a tropical island… Of rainstorms pounding our roof. Of running into the ocean since the rain would soak us anyway. Of driving under a cloud and instantly needing maximum speed windshield wipers to be able to see ahead, then suddenly hearing the squeaking noise of the full speed wipers streaking across a dry windshield seconds after driving out from under the rain cloud. Rain falling like a memory, and a melody, evoking a sense of comfort, a feeling of being home.

Cold shower

Unexpected snow has delayed my Daily-Ink today… Shovelling the driveway is taking priority and I’ll get this out tonight. But this is connected to the idea of the post, because I really bundle up just to do something like clearing that white, fluffy, frigid stuff off of my driveway.

Cold showers:

I hate the cold. Can’t stand feeling a chill. I blame it on being born in the Caribbean. In Barbados as a kid, when I was at the beach and it started to rain, tourists would get into the water, since they are getting wet anyway. I’d get out of the water because without the sun shining, the water was too cold for me.

Recently I’ve been turning the hot water off at the end of my showers. I let the water hit the top of my head and wait for it to go cold. Then I move so the water hits my chest and I turn in a circle, getting the water first to hit my core, then down my arms and legs.

By my first turn, my breath is taken away. I actually feel like it’s hard to breathe. I only do this for about 15 seconds but it feels longer. Even after I turn the water off my breathing is shallow and takes a moment to recover.

Then two things happen, first, I feel a tingling sensation and I feel wide awake. This feeling is better than my first coffee! Next, I open my shower curtain and grab my towel. Usually when I do this I feel an uncomfortable chill, but instead the air feels comfortable. So rather than getting a chill from the contrast of hot water to cold air, I feel comfortable.

Fifteen seconds of chilly agony, followed by a huge payoff. I’m going to keep doing this, but I might end up taking slightly longer showers as I convince myself to turn the hot water off.

I’ve got a friend who asks me to join him for a polar bear swim each new year. I’m a step closer, but it might still be a few years before I am willing to take the plunge… if I ever do!