We’ve returned from our whirlwind trip to Punta Cana and taking this B.C. Day to recover. I thought I would still get this video posted today to share something we saw on the plane ride home.

On route from Toronto to Vancouver, we caught these thunderstorms over the Canadian Prairies, looking north somewhere over Manitoba and Alberta. I’ve flown enough to see storms from above before, but nothing like this. After watching the show for a little while, I made a mad grab from my camera to shoot some video of it. It’s not the best quality, but some of the lightning displays are pretty amazing.

This was tough to shoot in terms of blocking any reflection in the window. Being dusk to complete darkness outside, I thought I would try anyway. Sadly it was just too dark to take any photo or video of the lines of flames I saw from some of the wildfires in the interior, and those gave me bigger chills than the lightning show.

This was published originally on Miss604.com as apart of Blogathon 2009.

Hanging out at WorkSpace today for Blogathon, Rebecca snapped this great picture. It’s one of many, many streaks of lightning that filled the sky in the late afternoon, and these things aren’t that common. I don’t think I’ve seen a storm like that in about four years, which is when I moved here from eastern Iowa.

In the Midwest, you expect these things, and that’s because you have to.

As I watched the wall cloud come in over Mt. Seymour, that was a site that would strike a little fear into your gut as it came out of the horizon back home. What followed that was anyone’s guess. Intense wind to bust up trees, torrents of rain that could sweep your car off the road, baseball sized hail that would lead to cheap new car prices on damaged stock, or the ever friendly tornado that might knock on your door as an uninvited guest.

Watching the lightning zap the holy hell out of the mountains, it reminded me of those times when it was, “Get to the basement!” And it always seem like at that very moment, you’ve got to pee. The adrenaline kicks in and you do what you’ve been told over and over to do in school, but you still have this worst timing hit you at the same time.

That’s because tornadoes are pretty damn scary. They are additively fascinating to try and catch a glimpse of, but you just don’t want it to get too close because I’ve driven through towns that were ripped apart on a direct hit. I’ve grasped onto my mother under a blanket while the wind thumped against our house, sort of saying good-byes to each other through mutual I Iove yous.

That was one of my first times being on the radio when WMT called our house to speak to a witness. I barely had my nerves together enough to say my name correctly yet alone recount all the trees and power lines down in our neighborhood.

Everyone seems to have a personal story or knows a story of someone else with experiences like this. You can never be too careful when it comes to any storm, but the one that reached downtown today was fairly impressive in its own right. Like I said, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something like that.

Photo credit: penmachine on Flickr

I noticed this from work today. The mountains look so incredible this time of year. Rebecca said it best. When it’s summer and everything is green to the point where you can see every single tree on the sides of the mountains, the mountains seem so close. Then when it’s cold and snow capped, they seem so far away.

As long as the snow stays up there, where it’s far away, I’m cool with that.

Thanks to the KatKam for the picture.

That was the scene this afternoon, and it looks like we’re getting more tonight before it turns to slush and rain by Monday.

The funny thing is the next picture that Rebecca took while we were back in Iowa about a week ago.

Photo credit: miss604 on Flickr

I’m sorry, Vancouver. Looks like we brought it with us.

The other day, Rebecca and I were on the topic of the recent tornado that swept through Greensburg, Kansas. She said something to the effect that she heard that it was two miles wide. I could not believe that and was assured that she had her facts a little misconstrued, if not a little off. Growing up in the Midwest, I’ve been through my share of scares and seen a few funnel clouds. Haven’t seen, first hand, a lot of tornadoes on the ground, but it’s one of those things that everyone just knows about.

Shockingly, I was wrong, and she was right.

Since the tornado flattened Greensburg on Friday night, emergency responders have struggled to find out how many of its 1,600 residents may be safely staying with friends or relatives, rather than in shelters.

The massive tornado, an enhanced F-5 with wind estimated at 205 mph, was part of a weekend of violent storms that tore across the Plains and were also blamed for two other deaths in Kansas.

The death toll could have been much worse, but for a 20-minute warning – a rarely issued “tornado emergency” alert – that gave people time to take shelter in basements and storm cellars. [myway]

Look at this photo, too. When I heard the initial reports that the city was basically wiped off the face of the earth, you think that it’s just journalistic sensationalism. After reading that, I think about what it was like to go through the handful of close calls in my lifetime and how intense a storm like that could be. In fact, I couldn’t imagine.

Growing up, there was the small town Worthington, smaller than the small town I grew up in, that was hit straight on by a tornado. The trail of debris and destruction was, as I recall, was a few hundred feet wide. Basically, you could follow the exact path, and it was one of those typical scenes. What was tore to shreds in one place, the object next to it was pristine and not damaged at all. Even though we were total gawkers, checking out the destruction in our car and getting on the nerves of the National Guard who were there to clean things up, I learned exactly why you need to take tornadoes seriously.

Ever been huddled under a blanket in the corner of the basement while waves of rain, wind, and chunks of trees slam into the house above you? It was enough to have my mother start saying her last goodbyes, and I was right there with her. That wasn’t even a tornado. Microbursts[wiki] are just as hair raising, as I discovered on that one summer afternoon. Our house was spared, but within five minutes, we lost a lot of trees in our neighborhood. I did end up getting cut on my arm while helping with the cleanup, and there was no power until the next day.

It’s unbelievable to think that a tornado struck a town straight on at a width of nearly two miles wide. That is a vision of a nightmare, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around this fact. Envisioning it is scary enough. I feel for those who were affected. Even though I’ve kinda been there, what happened in Greensburg is a hundred times worse. Can only hope that they have the strength to rebuild. Rebuild an entire town, that is.

Rain. So many people are going to be talking about it, but this has been a stereotypical weekend in Vancouver. Not the gentle mist or light rain that is more common place. Instead, nice, steady drops of water, seemingly never ending as they fall to the earth.

We made ventures downtown to find massive puddles in the intersections, proof that even the sewer drains were struggling to keep up with the amounts. Just trying to navigate through the crowds of people was enough to drive one a bit mad. It never fails that you run into that one group of about six folks who are walking along the sidewalk at a snail’s pace, taking up the whole width of the walkway. Give them all umbrellas and ye’ abandon all hope of getting ahead of them.

Riding the SeaBus to meet up with our friends for yet another Canucks PPV game(three in one week is just slightly annoying), I told Rebecca that this is a very, upper northwest day.

Tod Maffin mentioned this on his blog sometime ago, and it’s too much fun to not pass on. Weather Bonk is a great mashup of Google Maps and The Weather Channel, not to mention a variety of other great utilities.

I use a combinations of widgets to get the current weather for Vancouver on my desktop, but the Route Weather is a pretty amazing tool for mapping out the forecast of your road trip. I also love the variety of webcams that you can locate with the map. The site seems to have a pretty good pulse on what is available for nearly every major city in North America.

Be careful. You could end up toying around with this site for hours.

Call it whining if you want, but it’s freaking cold. Snowed about three days ago, and the temp hasn’t reached much above freezing since then. More pictures of some of the recent snow in Vancouver can be found here.

Sure, it’ll be a short time until it stops freezing and the rain starts up again. And yes, their is plenty of breath to be seen by those living in the prairies. Still no snow or long cold snaps in areas of Ontario where they should be having the weather we are having. In fact, reports from my family in the upper midwest of the U.S. say that they’re enjoying Vancouver type weather more than we are in Vancouver, just minus all the rain.

By the way, you have got to check out these pics of a recent ice storm to hit areas of Nebraska. Amazing shots for sure. My dad’s side of the family are mostly in the eastern portions of the state. Reports from them stem from having no power for nearly a whole day to an entire week. Now THAT is an ice storm. I’ll take an inch or two of snow on the ground any day compared to that.

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the climate change debate. I’m inclined to post about it more in the future. You have to admit, things just ain’t the way they used to be.

It’s just something you do on a day like today. Below freezing temps, hardly any wind, all the sun you could ever ask for, and a hot coffee in your hand. It’s been a nice two weeks to have Rebecca off from work, even if we haven’t left the city. In due time, you can bet that we’ll plan on making our holidays in much warmer climates. Not the greatest quality, but the cellphone can only do so much.

We’ve been busy with getting everything set for the holidays. That pretty much means shopping. I’ve been taking care of a few various projects in between, but we ventured out to Stanley Park today with Rebecca’s dad. I went running yesterday, and the park was in pretty bad shape.

Last Thursday night, I woke up around 3AM to the sounds of wind. Massive amounts of wind. You could hear various pieces of debris rolling around outside, so I got up to peak out the windows. They are saying that we experienced hurricane force winds in the category two range, but it didn’t take me very long to make sure that everything was okay in the apartment and gather flashlights in the event that we lost power. Rebecca, on the other hand, slept all the way through it.

Luckily, we didn’t lose power in our end of the city. Other folks were not so fortunate, and I got a message from DaveO that tells me that North Vancouver experienced some outages. Word from Surrey said that some folks took a hit as well. Trees are damaged all over downtown through.

About running the park yesterday, it was a mess. I had to tiptoe around a lot of fallen foliage, some much larger in various spots. Heading back in today, I was sure to bring the camera along(see them on Flickr here). It looked like a war zone in some spots.

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) – It looks like a crime scene.

And the trees are the victims.

Crews are asking the public to stay out of a battered Stanley Park.

Yellow caution ribbon is strung across pathways littered with branches and tree-trunks.
A trades foreman with the park board, Gary Gilder, says the wind damaged trees are a real danger.

“……and a lot of trees in the bus hung up…..against other trees….that have not quite fallen over so it’s…I would say stay out of the park until the end of the weekend”

The park itself will be closed for the weekend. That includes the seawall, the Vancouver Aquarium and bright nights Christmas attraction.[cknw]

Yeah, I guess you could say that the park was closed, but we got ourselves inside and checked out the damage. However, I wouldn’t recommend it at all. Trails are cut off all over the place, not to mention that the seawall was blocked off at the point where you can take Beaver Creek trail up to Beaver Lake. And what trails you can find access to are bound to be blocked off at some point. You get past one tree to only find another.

When I went running through yesterday, there was no automobile traffic whatsoever. Getting around Brockton Point, I couldn’t even run on the bike path. They’re doing some reno to the lighthouse area, so all Seawall traffic is forced onto the upper route around the backside. Just beyond that, you could see that they worked a path through the fallen trees and branches for authorized vehicles to get into the area, but it was a tight squeeze. I actually passed a variety of people walking on the road in the opposite direction who, like me, didn’t know that the park was officially closed.

It’s really sad to see. I fear that it’s going to be a long time before anyone can safely or completely venture through the entire park. It’s a great place to go running or wandering through. I hope to see things restored as soon as possible. For only living here as short as I have, I’ve really come to love that park. It won’t be the same, but I’ll be anxious to see it back again.

I ventured out on a route this morning that, in hindsight, I should have thought out a little bit more. The massive amounts of wind that played with the trees outside of the apartment yesterday had me concerned about the roots holding. Windows rattled and the whole place rumbled. These are the types of weather systems that start here and end up dumping loads of winter goodness in the lands of the Midwest where I used to call home.

The seawall was pretty clear, but there were bits of trees laying on the ground that I took care to step around and over. When I got to the part where I anticipated heading into the park, I only got about a hundred meters when I ran into the first tree on the path. Took some careful steps, but I got around it alright. A little further, I came to a Y-intersection. One way took me to Beaver Lake, and there was no way I could get around or through.

The tree covered access to both of these trails, but a slight amount of space let me crawl under it to the other trail option, just enough so that I was drenched by the water trapped in the pine needles. On the other side, I found another tree laying in the path. Luckily, this wasn’t of the same variety, so some careful dancing and ducking got me through to the other side. I got to the top of the path and took the road back out to the seawall.

The weatherman said a couple more systems are to come yet this week. Lots of rain, lots of wind. I’ll keep that in mind before I try running through the park anytime soon. Made for a longer route than I wanted today.

Being ill for the past couple of days, I haven’t been able to enjoy the snow very much. My plan was to take more pictures, if not do some mobile recording for RadioZoom. The internet has been my only link to seeing what’s going on beyond the windows of the apartment. If it weren’t for the KatKam and Vancouver.com Web Cam(you guys got to come up with a better name for that thing), I’m not sure I would have a good sense of what the world of Vancouver would be looking like right now.

Yeah, this is another post about the weather in Vancouver, but even I find some amazement in all the snow that has fallen recently. The short amount of exposure that I have gotten in it has been intriguing.

While on my way up and down Robson during my picture taking venture[flickr], I passed by the shoe dumping spot in front of Payless, as Rebecca often calls it. There’s so many times that we see a pair of shoes sitting on the corner there, always saying how odd it is. Do people actually dump their shoes there for what they just bought in the store? The answer is yes, and I passed by some chick who was trading in her runners for a pair of those annoying fuzzy boots, using the front windows for balance as she made the switch.

Alas, the one time in Vancouver in which horribly ugly, fuzzy boots actually make sense. Well, aside from the days when I was eight, but those were moon boots that were more robot like, not so much fuzzy and “cute”. I’m sure there are those who wouldn’t dare wear them out in this snow because they might ruin them. Or better yet, those fuzzy boots are for summer wear, not winter. Yes, you see them even on the hottest of days.

I mentioned how our building guys used a pole and dust pan contraption to clear the sidewalks before[post], but other folks have some slightly better tools at hand. Still, they’re not the best for removing snow. Garden spades, kitchen brooms, and even floor squeegees are some of the things I’ve seen. Those people tucker out pretty fast, too. At least they’re out there removing the snow. Some folks, and many shops on Robson, have not been very quick to this courtesy.

Everyone and their cat is blogging away about it, but snow is rare in Vancouver. Compared to growing up in Iowa, whiteness is something that you learn to live with, but this “falling white death from the sky”, as my high school physics teacher from Florida liked to call it, has completely caught me by surprise.

I’m actually surprised to not hear more about accidents on the roads, but folks on the lower mainland might have opted to stay off them as much as possible. That hasn’t stopped me from spotting a few horrible drivers in the downtown area. One should understand that when snow falls, the roads get slick. When the roads are slick, you can’t drive like you usually do. You can’t do quick acceleration and stop quickly when coming to an intersection. The laws of common sense tell you that you’re stupid if you try. And just because you own a Jeep or Hummer, that does not make you invincible.

I did witness a pretty bad fender bender on Saturday night. I was walking along Georgia and caught a minivan-taxi run into the back of a fellow car-taxi. It all happened in my peripheral vision, but I caught all the plastic pieces falling to the ground after the initial crunch. This is what happens when the light turns red and you don’t give yourself enough space for the car ahead of you to stop. I was in a hurry to meet Rebecca at the SkyTrain station but made sure everyone was alright before I went on my way.

The lack of snow removal really shows how unusual this weather is to this area. Earlier today, I watched one of the maintenance guys from our building clear the sidewalk. He was using a dust pan that was duct taped to a pole. It didn’t look pretty, but all that matters is that it worked.

Running an errand today, I wandered around the west end and Robson with my camera for a bit[flickr]. Snow removal on the sidewalks was spotty. That’s a little unheard of back in my home state, and Rebecca noted that during her time in Boston, sidewalks were cleared of snow on a constant basis. Like I said, snow is unusual here, especially in the downtown core. However, this stuff is going to stick around for a few days. It’s only going to get colder before it warms up enough to melt it all away.

Truthfully, I’m not complaining. I love snow. I love to throw snowballs and go sledding. Sadly, there’s not too many places to do that nearby. It’s only been in the last hour that the snow has really stopped. My hope is to do a bit of running tomorrow. Jogging through the snow is tricky. It is more of a workout and requires a little more concentration. It’s fun, too.

This boil water advisory has gotten old, fast. This goes beyond whining. I’d consider this a matter of concern for every person in the GVRD. If a bad weather system can leave us fighting for bottled water, think what an earthquake can do.

Posted AT 12:17 PM EST ON 20/11/06

B.C. water warning could last weeks: official

TENILLE BONOGUORE
Globe and Mail Update

Stark water warnings forcing almost a million B.C. residents to boil their tap water could be in place for weeks to come, the Greater Vancouver Regional District has warned.

Weekend storms and continuing rainfall added even more sediment to the already-turbid water supplies for Vancouver and Burnaby.

District spokesman Bill Morrell said Monday that, without a prolonged stretch of clear weather, the water supply had little chance of clearing.

“The sediment is very, very fine, and it will stay suspended in the water for some time,” Mr. Morrell said.

“It’s very difficult to speculate when it will be within acceptable limits. Our operations folks are of the opinion it may be weeks before this is settled out.” [globeandmail]

In a pinch, I could fashion together a setup to distill our own water, a la MacGyver. Amazing that high school chemistry taught me something and I remember it. Kinda. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

As I mentioned in my last post, we don’t have a dishwasher. During this boil water advisory that we’ve been under since Thursday, the recommendation is to not use the water for drinking, rinsing fruit and vegetables, or washing dishes. If you have a dishwasher with a “hot setting”, then you can use it.

Doing some quick searching, I found this page from the Ontario Ministry of Health regarding How to Use Water Safely During a “Boil Water Advisory”. It’s all worth a read, but here’s the info I was most interested in.

I wash dishes by hand. How do I disinfect them?

You could use boiled water for washing dishes. Dishes washed in soap and hot water can also be rinsed in boiled water or disinfected with the following bleach solution. Mix 1 ounce (about 30 ml) bleach in to three gallons (13.5 litres) of water at room temperature for at least one minute. Let dishes air dry.

We had a bit of rain and wind this morning, but the skies have been partly sunny since about noon. My hope is that’s all from the storm that was supposed to take hold today. I would think that this whole boil water thing would be lifted somewhat soon.