I didn’t mean to post another weather related rant, but this fact deserves mentioning. Yellowknife in the North West Territories (Canada’s “Great White North”) is actually warmer and sunnier than Vancouver, BC.
Vancouver
Current Conditions: Light Rain, 11 °C
Observed at: Vancouver Int’l Airport
Date: 10:00 AM PDT Monday 9 June 2008
Yellowknife
Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy, 16 °C
Observed at: Yellowknife Airport
Date: 11:00 AM MDT Monday 9 June 2008
Two weeks ago, when we got home from our vacation, I thought summer (or late spring at the very least) had finally arrived. Particularly, since it was so hot the weekend we got back.
Fortunately it cooled off a bit soon thereafter, because that weekend was a little too “warm” for my liking. However, it’s been gradually getting worse and worse ever since. There were a few nice, sunny, warm days, but now it’s back to daily highs of 12°C and rain. — And it’s supposed to stay like that for the whole week.
To be fair, the weather last weekend was good, and it doesn’t look too bad for the next one, either.
However, I can’t help but wonder: when, just when will it turn nice for more than a day or two in a row? The weather we are having right now is suitable for October or February, not June.
And no, I am not asking for 35°C heat or anything even close to that. 
The weather is not supposed to do that. Snow in April is just wrong. Especially in Vancouver. But it happened.
Getting back from a trip to San Jose, on April 18, I was welcomed by thick snow flakes falling from the sky. It even started to stick. About an hour after getting home, the view from our condo looked like this.
Of course it’s all gone again by now, but it’s still too cool for this time of year.
It’s been almost a full month since my last post. Bad me. I guess that means not too much stuff was going on.
Apparently, the latest cold spell not only brought snow, yet again, it also brought at least two colds. A major one for my poor sweetie and a quite minor one for me — my nose is not even properly stuffed up (yet), but it can stay that way as far as I am concerned.
Let’s hope we’ll be feeling better soon, especially Brigette, who’s recuperating in bed right now. And I have to go on another San Jose trip this coming Wednesday. I’d rather not suffer from a cold while on my trip.
We’ll hole up on the weekend, I am thinking, drink hot tea, eat fruit and drink juices with lots of vitamin C.Blogged with Flock
Here are some photos from two Sundays ago when we had tons of snow here in Vancouver for one full day (yep, that’s how long it lasted). Haven’t gotten around to posting them before. So, here we go.
However, I have to issue this warning first:
Dear wife, close your eyes, you’ll find these gross.
The fountain in front of Bloedel Conservatory:
This is the Big Quarry in Queen Elisabeth Park:
Looks like we are facing another period of turbid tap water. And, just like last time, it looks like Burnaby is the first place where tap water turns nasty (and presumably also the last place where it clears up again).
By tonight or tomorrow morning our tap water at home is likely to look a bit “muddy” as well and it probably won’t fully clear before we leave for our Christmas vacation.
This time around the cause for our “nasty” water is:
The hardest part last time was to remember not to just take a mouth full of tap water to brush my teeth. I am sure it’ll be very similar this time as well. Other than that it shouldn’t be too bad.
Looks like it was snowing for the most part of last night as well as this morning. There’s a lot of the white stuff out there right now. The temperature is 0°C right now, according to the all-knowing Internet.
Here are some pictures I just took.
There are probably more pictures to come. I am planning on venturing out there for a little walkie in the afternoon.
Perfectly on time for December 1 (is 2007 really almost over already?!) it started snowing — and snow started to stick. Doesn’t happen all that often in Vancouver, maybe once or twice a season for a day or two. However, so far, we haven’t even come close to matching last year’s first snow fall.
This morning it looked like this:
I kind of like seeing the landscape under a white blanket every once in a while. My dear wife, however, could not be disagreeing more. 
Just learned from my dad that apparently my mom’s sister, Hermi, suffered pretty very wind damage to her house. Looks like parts of the roof truss were ripped away. My aunt was at work as it happened. Neighbours called Fire Rescue and they secured the site and had the roof patched up again with a makeshift fix by the time she got home. So that was good. And that nobody got hurt.
The house of my dad’s sister and brother-in-law lost a few roof tiles during the storm, but nothing too serious happened. My grandma’s house, very close by, sustained no damage.
This is the first time that actually somebody I know or am related with suffered severe damage during a windstorm. The hurricane hit Thursday and Friday of last week.
It must have been really bad. Probably not the last storm of this intensity, though.
An article on the website of the Austrian Broadcasting Station talks about some pretty scary temperature developments in large parts of southern and central Europe.
The report is based on a new US study that says that over the next few decades it will become unbearably hot in the Mediterranean. One of the co-authors of the study, Jeremy Pal, is quoted saying the extreme weather conditions of today will be normal in the future. The extreme weather conditions then will be unprecedented.
The study also says that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can greatly reduce the impact, but there will still be negative effects. Or in other words: if we do something (or a lot, actually) now, we suffer a little, if we don’t, we suffer a lot.
Now, the scary thing is that it is already noticeable. The changes in weather patters have already happened and are still happening. Last winter was pretty much the first time ever that even Alpine regions in Austria barely got snow.
Then, again for the first time ever, temperatures went up into the mid to high twenties (Celsius) for a brief period as early as April. Of course it cooled down again after a couple of days, but still. Now, Austria is experiencing 35°C weather along with many other parts of Europe. That’s definitely unusual, and it seems like change is happening faster and faster.
During the early 2000s everybody was noticing that spring (and to some degree fall) were getting shorter. It would stay cool fairly long, but then jump 10-15 degrees within a couple of days (from, say, 8°C to 20°C). Summer had arrived. No more gradual increase in temperature. I guess that’s just gotten even more extreme now. Just this past week they had tornadoes and other severe weather conditions in many parts of Austria and the neighbouring countries.
To top it all off, I just found on the web that there was snowfall in Western Austria and Switzerland at the end of May of this year. 28°C on the weekend, snowfall two days later on Tuesday.
This is what makes this study so scary to me. That we can already see and feel the effects of the change.
