This has literally been the longest winter that I can
recall. It started getting cold in the
last couple of days of November 2016 and has essentially remained cold right up
to the writing of this article on Feb 6, 2017.
There has been lots of snow, not so much in overall accumulation, but
more in the number of snow days. Up
until yesterday there had been 8 snow events overall and it has started snowing
again today.
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| FIRST SNOW IN DECEMBER |
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| FIRST FOOTPRINT IN SNOW |
This past weekend though, it started snowing at 8:30 AM on
Friday morning and kept snowing all day and all night. It continued to snow most of Saturday and
finally stopped in the afternoon. It did
snow some more on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, but stopped for
several hours before starting up again Sunday night.
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| SIGNS OF SPRING IN JANUARY? |
The snow stopped Monday morning after I dropped Renee off at
the Westcoast Express. It remained snow
free and the sun even came out during our morning walk. It started again about 2:30 PM and is now
snowing heavily again. So far, we have a
measured 14 inches of snow at my place and it is building quickly.
This is the longest winter, I am sure, but it is by no means
the biggest snowfall. Way back in 1996,
December 29 (My Dad’s birthday), it started snowing heavily and kept right on
going. It produced a record amount of
snow over a couple of days, almost 32 inches.
I was supposed to be working, but had been badly injured in a car
accident at work on December 6.
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| THE MIGHTY FRASER RIVER FROZEN |
It was a blessing that I couldn’t work though, as the city
was essentially shut down. A Canucks
game was cancelled, buses couldn’t move, other traffic was snarled. I couldn’t really enjoy it because of a
wicked concussion, although I did have my kids for a week during that time and
we were able to trek over to the park so they could slide down the same hill
that I did as a kid.
Here is a link to the great snowmaggedon story of 1996:
It has been an amazing winter. It’s like living on the prairies, like my
Mom. We have had extreme cold days -12C
(extreme for our area), there has been Chinook type weather were the
temperature climbed above freezing and allowing it to rain and melt all the
snow, only to have the cold return a few days later.
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| BARBECUING IN THE SNOW IN FEBRUARY |
It has played hell with the electric bill as I have only
electric baseboard heating. I thought
the $300 bill during the summer was bad because of the air conditioning, but
the $450 bill put that one to shame. It
also convinced me to switch to a monthly equalization plan so now I pay a manageable
$136 per month.
The strata corporation has been good about salting, sanding
and even plowing our roads when needed.
The first night though was a bit of a rude awakening when the snow plow
came through at 1:30 AM and woke us from a dead sleep. It’s funny though, I talked to numerous
neighbours and nobody else heard him.
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| BUILDUP ON TABLE |
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| TOBY THE SNOWDOG |
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| SURPRISE, SHOVELED DRIVEWAY |
