Please note that this is not bitching, moaning, or groaning. I am exercising my right as a Canadian to complain about the weather. I am quite happy being away from the frigid climes of northern Alberta. When you close your tailgate and the Nissan emblems falls off because the adhesive no longer wants to adhere at -50c, one neither reminisces nor pines.
November, according to the locals, is the rainiest and grayest month in Vancouver. This year, I agree with them. Mowgli, our puppy, is a little uncomfortable going out for walks in the dark. He is equally uncomfortable going out for walks in the rain. At night in the rain, we usually end up going out for a drag; he’s been getting to exercise his pulling-back muscles.
I listen to news/talk radio during the week. This is how Al-Qaeda changed my life after 9/11. Before that day, I used to listen to the FM flavor of the month. On that morning, I was listening to a New York city DJ as he described what he was seeing; it was eerie. As a result, Monday to Friday, I listen to talk radio. I actually survived 6 years of Uber-Ultra-Mega Conservative talk radio in Alberta.
The pinnacle of said radio is Dave Rutherford; when the Conservatives talk about pandering to the Socialists & Separatists, they are speaking directly to Rutherford’s soul. Our Prime Minister's views on the media in Canada (detestable & to be avoided at any cost) DO NOT extend to Dave Rutherford. Which is fair since he is definitely on the talk half of News/Talk. The PM had been a surprise guest on the Rutherford show a number of times while I was still living in Alberta. Unsurprisingly, his show is not picked up by CKNW in Vancouver, the local Corus affiliate. Red is a deeper hue of their anti-bullying t-shirts CKNW promotes, not the color of their necks.
A good segue to the subject at hand. I was listening to the radio November 23rd, and the CKNW weather dude, Marc Madryga, was telling us how there had been 23 straight days of rain. We live in North Vancouver, in the Lynn Valley area. North Vancouver is famous for lots of rain, specifically in Lynn Valley. I’m not sure how the rest of Vancouver fared, but we had rain in the next 4 days, bringing us to 27 straight days of rain. Mowgli was convinced I was trying to drown him.
Fortunately, we live on the side of a mountain, so all that water rolled downhill. And there was quite a bit of water. Listening to Mr. Madryga a few days later, they had tracked a low of 600mm of rain up to a high of 1100mm of rain in November. Let me put this into perspective for you. 1100mm of rain would be enough to drown either Vern Troyer or Hervé Villechaize standing up; the average door knob is just under 1100mm; picture your kitchen counters, under water. Using the rule of thumb of multiplying by 10 to find out how much snow that could have been, we get 11 meters. This is higher than my house.
When we were kids, there was a particularly nasty winter storm one March 16. All the schools were closed. This is Montréal, not Toronto. In Toronto, they close the schools at a 5cm accumulation. On this March 16, the schools were closed, not much traffic was moving, and the snow plows were having a hard time getting around. After our 2nd sortie to shovel the driveway, we were gathered around the radio (yes news/talk) and they announced that Dorval Airport was asking for covered Bombardier commercial snowmobiles to come out to the airport. There were planes that had landed, that were stranded, and they were looking for a way to move the passengers from the planes to the terminal.
We received over 60cm (600mm) of snow that day. Nothing really happened other than snow falling, snow shoveling, listening to the radio, and hot chocolate. We decided that the day never really happened, so we took out a pair of scissors, and cut March 16 out of the calendar.
I have scratched out “vember” on my calendar and written in “ah”.
And that is the ark of this story.
(Nita, my loving wife, even after that one, tries to tell there are some I should walk away from.)
Cheers folks!
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