by long weekend storm
The Remembrance Day long weekend in British Columbia turned into an unforgettable one, weather-wise. A large area of the province from the coast to the interior was hit by a powerful storm, from Sunday evening until Monday afternoon. Falling trees damaged many homes and vast areas of power lines. At its peak, 196,000 homes were without power. Ferries were not running for many hours on Monday, causing backlogs for travellers trying to return home.
In our neighbourhood, we were lightly touched this time, losing power for only about 6 hours during the day yesterday. Our home remained a reasonably comfortable 18C, with 10C outside. Power was restored at dusk, just before we were going to light candles and start a fire in the fireplace to warm up the chili and make tea. Our phone line was unaffected, though we had to dig up the old rotary dial phone to call our daughters to check on how they were faring. Elisa’s family in Vancouver and Erika and partner in Surrey were unaffected. Anita and her partner, east of Kamloops, however have been without power since Monday morning and would not have it restored until today, hopefully. They’ve had a cold night at just above freezing, and without a working fireplace. I was very surprised that the storm reached that far northeast.
Some reports say this storm was as bad as last year’s big one on December 14th. The number of homes without power was almost as high this year, but I don’t think we’ve had the devastating losses in our parks this time around. I took the above photo a few days ago in a part of Cates Park which lost a huge number of trees last year.
Everyone is wondering if this year will be another year of numerous big storms, like the past year. In the 35 years we’ve lived here, it’s never been so stormy so often. Interesting times.
