Tag Archives: hurricane

First time I ever blogged on January 31

What I've Been Up To, , ,

Turns out I never have anything to say on January 31. I have a little widget in the sidebar that displays what I have posted on this day in previous years and today it is blank! Next year I will appreciate this post.

Not much new.  We’re in the midst of a wild hurricane-like weather spell.  It was +12 today and raining with 100km/hr wind gusts. It has been -20 at times this month and the ground was frozen.  Yesterday when the temperature shot up to 0 it was ridiculously slippery outside in the rain. The rain was freezing quickly on concrete and I walked across campus to and from a meeting by shuffling my feet and grabbing railings wherever possible. The asphalt wasn’t quite as bad. Luckily I followed a salt truck most of the way home.

The faculty at the university were I work are on strike this week.  I went out at lunch today to carry my union’s flag and walk their line. They seem very strong and determined to have their voice heard.  Meanwhile the students numbers on campus have quickly dwindled. Campus is eerily quiet with no classes.  One coworker said it felt like the twilight zone.  My union is in conciliation with our employer now so hopefully we reach a successful conclusion shortly or we will also be on the picket line.

Hmmm. In retrospect, maybe I should have left today vacant.  I’m rather uninspiring.  The internet is painfully slow and disrupted tonight. Time to go offline.  Jeff’s watching Duck Commander. I think I will join him. Ta ta

Fascinated by the potential historic storm forming

Weather,

The best part of my day today was watching meteorologists twitter about each weather model as they were released, looking at the potential for a historic storm to hit the eastern coast of the USA.

Newly formed Tropical Storm Sandy could play a role in this historic event. Although the chances are being dismissed as just too unprobable, because it has never happened before, they are discussing the odd chance of a hurricane hitting the coast, bringing tremendous coastal flooding (because of the full moon and higher than normal tides), possibilities of devastating inches of rain, with snow inland!

Not just any old storm. THE STORM OF A CENTURY!

COULD THIS EVER HAPPEN? OH MY GOODNESS!?!?!

….or Sandy could just swing out to sea.

The last time a hurricane formed where Tropical Depression Sandy is located, it was 1878 and more than 71 people were killed on the eastern seaboard of the US (the Gale of ’78).

Read what the meteorologists are saying.

If you are a Twitter-ite, follow #Sandy

It is still 7 days out so it could turn out to be absolutely nothing.

OR IT COULD BE THE END OF TIMES… or something like that.

Regardless of where it goes next, it is going to rain hard in Jamaica and Cuba.

Cold, lung trouble, turkey update, and Rafael’s a comin’!

What I've Been Up To, , , , ,

Tropical Storm Rafael just formed and will be heading up to Atlantic Canada quickly next week.  Looks like it will likely hit Newfoundland.  Right now we have a 5% chance of experiencing tropical storm winds. YEE HA!

Brrrrrrrr….

Stubbornly we haven’t started heating our house. And it is often 14-16°C in here. I sleep in my sheep wool slippers under a fleece sheet, a goose down duvet, and a big comforter.  I’m close to caving.  We don’t have a furnace – just electric baseboards, a big ol’ woodstove in the basement, and a fireplace in the living room.

There isn’t much sense to fire up the wood stove in the basement until we’re going to heat for the winter. It takes at least 24 hours to heat up the basement and the basement walls before the heat will rise up to the rest of the house.

We could turn the electric baseboards on, but…. not yet.

A few times a day I warm up my frozen fingers on Jeff’s radiator hot body.  He isn’t as fond of that move as I am.

It is going down to 3°C tonight. I may have to sport a toque.

Rowing

Speaking of brrrr, there is a rowing regatta on our lake tomorrow. The local rowing teams have been on the lake rowing every morning when I head to work at 7:20.  This morning was frosty and the mist was still on the lake, and they were out there carving their long skinny boat down the lake.

Turkey Update

The 20lb turkey for 2 is still hanging on.  We’ve depleted all the rest of the fixin’s, but there is still a few turkey sandwiches worth of turkey left. Here is a neat picture I took for Instagram on my iPhone. I was out for a walk between turkey dinners this past Monday.  I don’t really enjoy walking along the highway, but the view is nice! As you can see, there isn’t a lot of safe walking space, especially not with a dog, when traffic zips by.

Lungs

My lungs don’t like October in Nova Scotia.  Back in 2008 my lungs were bad enough to get a special Flovent inhaler.  I’ve felt them getting bad again. Like an asthma attack is coming.  I feel friction when I breathe. A bit of lung burn.  Yesterday it got so bad I couldn’t recover after walking and climbing stairs. I didn’t have any inhalers with me and I had to train a faculty member in her office. I just couldn’t catch my breath between sentences. She must have thought I was dying.

I downloaded this fascinating app that can actually take your heart rate (by using your finger on the camera lens – it can see the colour change in your skin with each pulse).  Even resting, my heart rate was around 95 beats a minute.

I found that Flovent inhaler and after a couple doses last night, and this morning, albeit expired, my resting heart rate came down to the low 70′s today.  I’m breathing much better.  I will have to see the Dr. one of these days and update the prescriptions. I don’t know what sets me off in October, but I’m sure the mold on this incoming air vent above my office desk isn’t helping:

vent

 

Water update, and we’re blindly facing the hurricanes now!

What I've Been Up To, ,

With Dad’s help and after a chat with a plumber, we’re a bit closer to diagnosing our water woes.  Our first discovery was that the pressure gauge is frozen at 30 psi so we can’t tell at what pressure the well pump is kicking in.

I picked up a new gauge yesterday and Jeff installed it.  Now we know the well pump is kicking in at 26 psi and shutting off at 50 psi.  The plumber said it is supposed to kick in at 30 psi.  If that is the only problem, 4 psi too low is really making for an awful shower this week when the pressure goes down. There isn’t enough water to wash the soap off. Maybe 26 psi isn’t enough pressure to pump the water up 2 stories.

The next step is cleaning out a clean up near the pressure valve to see if that will do it. And then I guess we find out how to reset it back to 30 psi.

So hopefully there is no major repair or parts to replace.

And in other news….

Did you hear the U.S. weather satellite that tracks hurricanes in the Atlantic ocean is broken?

That satellite cost $500 million when it was launched in 2006. It wasn’t used regularly for weather monitoring until 2010.  On Friday engineers shut it down because of vibrations and are still working on diagnosing the problem.  I guess they can’t just send out a technician to a fix it up, eh?

Meteorologists are using a spare satellite and using a European satellite for their Atlantic coast forecasts.  They said there may be a slight decrease in the accuracy of weather forecasts and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are checking to see if this is going to affect hurricane forecasting.

Ahhh!!

4:30am. So dark.

What I've Been Up To

It is 4:30am. I knew something was up when I woke up and couldn’t see. The power was out! No yard light outside lighting up around the edge of the curtain. No alarm clock glow. No red light on the tv. Power is out.

Monty is whining. It isn’t tropical storm windy, but it is windy enough to howl at the bedroom window.

I try to sleep, but I am such a sucker for storms, I found me headlamp on my dresser and got up.

Looks like our area is the only one in the province without power. (love having Internet on my phone to find these things out).

Now what.

All the meteorologists are busy on twitter watching Hurricane Leslie on its path towards Newfoundland already at this early hour.

I am sleepy. Maybe I will snooze on the couch for a bit. Wonder what the chance is of a power restoration before we go to work. I might have to shower at work.

Hurricane Leslie – Decided to pass us by

Weather, ,

Hurricane Leslie will be passing us by over the next 36 hours.

We have a heavy rain fall warning and are supposed to get >100mm by tomorrow morning with flash flooding possibilities.

I am supposed to stay in town until dark to attend a union meeting, but I am not keen driving home in the dark in flash flood conditions, so I may be a no-show.

Last week when we had the heavy rain fall warning it filled the wheel barrow 3/4 full with rain!  It has been so dry here this summer, that it really didn’t have a big impact. And the whole province is so close to the ocean, the water quickly runs off to the ocean.

It is forecast to only reach a high of 16 today, but it feels really humid to me.  It’s pretty windy, but nothing hurricane or tropical storm like. Environment Canada is forecasting wind of only 60 km/hr here.

Good luck with Leslie Newfoundland!

Quick Updates including our first possible HURRICANE of 2012

Weather,

Quick updates for YOU my beautiful blog reader:

  • Tropical Storm Leslie is the next thriller to watch.  It has great potential for growth and with the warm water, it will likely hold its strength.  It could hit Nova Scotia or Newfoundland on Monday/Tuesday next week.  I’m trying not to get too excited too early.  (yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ) It will probably be Saturday before we know for sure where this storm is going.  It’s been travelling sooo slow – like 5 miles per hour!
  • Those delicious red delicious apples at the corner store (that isn’t on a corner) are actually CHEAPER than the red delicious in the grocery store by about 15 cents.
  • Sitting on the front deck is so great! Stairs are in process
  • The sun sets so noticeably early this week, and takes its sweet ass time coming up in the morning.  The sun is long gone over the other side of the valley and it is only 7:45pm.
  • It’s been 3 months now since my myomectomy surgery.  I’m still not totally back to normal. I still need some naps, and physical activity tires me out fast – especially house cleaning/scrubbing [company is coming next week, gotta clean!] But overall I’m doing great!
  • ALSO! We have a heavy rain fall warning – Up to 75mm of rain coming tomorrow! (Is this the remnants of Hurricane Isaac?)

Tropical Storm Katia

Weather,

Tropical Storm Katia is churnin’ and burnin’ away in the Atlantic.

So far, the models and theories range from it spinning into sea and not hitting land, to hitting the east coast of the USA as a Category FIVE, and another possibility of it turning enough to miss the East Coast of the USA but could hit Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.

The last analysis video I watched on AccuWeather said if it stays below a category 3, the weather pattern over the US will push it out into the Atlantic and it won’t impact land. If it is stronger than a category 3, then it will do what it wants and it won’t be affected by any weather trough pushing eastwards, meaning it will go further west and probably impact the US. Lots of factors to weigh for the analysis of this storm, so we will just have to wait.

And if it is a dud, well there is another one spinning up behind it :-)

Stay tuned!

Hurricane Irene wrap-up

Weather,

Well we weathered Irene without much damage – except to my sleep.

We were way out on the east side of this storm, so it almost isn’t far to compare it to the other hurricane remnants we’ve had since moving here in 2007.

We have very little rain with Irene, just wind. It was very windy all night, and still is this morning, although it is mostly sunny now.

Monty was so squirrelly all night – actually starting yesterday afternoon. It must be the pressure that comes in with the storm. Between his panting and restlessness and jumping on the bed, and the sticky thick humidity, and the curtains blowing horizontally into the bedroom, I didn’t get much sleep. I got up sometime after 4am and took Monty downstairs so Jeff could sleep. I let Monty out in the dark to pee and he took his teddy bear in his mouth for his entire trip around the back yard and back into the house. How cute!

There wasn’t much on TV at 4am, so eventually I got Monty to stop panting and fall asleep and then I drifted off on the couch.

We had put the containers of tomatoes from the porch against the house and they seem fine this morning. The wind is like the past hurricanes, but without the intensity we’ve had before (where it felt like the roof was going for sure). This wind didn’t take down that many trees. I saw some branches down, but just small ones, and I saw an entire spruce tree uprooted (but that is common). Lots of leaf pieces are blown all over.

Here’s hoping for the humidity to take a hike so we can enjoy this sunshine!

I hope Mom enjoyed her first tropical storm (she’s still in PEI for a few more days).

Poor Jeff has no power at work and his Blackberry is about to die, so he may have a long day!