Tag Archives: rain

What’s this, some sort of tropical storm?

What I've Been Up To, , ,

+9 right now and pouring rain and very windy.

December 22 2012 webcam

 

Today I am cleaning the house, washing bedding for Mom & Julie, and maybe I’ll get to the baking.

Jeff is in New Glasgow picking up the ATV from Honda. This is the second place he’s taken it to, and they had no idea what the problem was, but hopefully they figured it out.  All signs now point to a faulty $10 sensor that is located somewhere in the machine’s core and requires some sort of dismantling to replace.

We have a heavy rainfall warning right now. 20-40mm with 70 km/hr winds. There is a slim chance of snow tomorrow, and then not again until Thursday so I think we’ll be having a green Christmas. At least the weather will be good to travel to Truro to pick up our guests.

It is our wedding anniversary today. FIVE years!

Milder, stormier winter predicted for us

Weather, , ,

Meteorologist Brett Anderson at Accuweather has predicted a milder winter for Atlantic Canada, with more storms.

“For Saint John’s and Halifax, we do expect a fairly stormy winter, especially from January through February, a number of coastal storms, I believe, will be coming up in those areas,” AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said. “But with at least milder-than-normal temperatures this winter, we could see an equal amount of snow and rainstorms coming into both of these cities.”

Check out the winter forecast for your area:

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/canada-winter-2012-2013-forecast/266862

Record rainfall = no beach

What I've Been Up To, , ,

It was a beautiful fall day today so we took Monty down to the next lake for a swim.

When we got there, we discovered the beach was gone!

Well not really GONE gone, just under the water!

We’ve had at least 3 heavy rain fall warnings in the last month and a couple good soakers on top of that, giving us over 300mm of rain.

Where’d the beach go?!? Usually these stairs go down onto the lake shore, not directly into the lake!
Jeff on the bench

This bench didn’t used to be IN the lake!

Carpe Diem!! I went for my first swim of 2012 in my clothes!

Who said you can’t swim in October? And wow, are Croc sandals ever buoyant! They kept springing up to the surface, with my feet in them!

It’s a cool rainy Saturday. Might as well hit the Bulk Barn!

What I've Been Up To, , , ,

I’ve been whining a lot lately about needing new shoes. And by lately, I mean for the last 2 years.

I really did not want to go all the way to Halifax, so Jeff’s desire to visit a gun show and an outdoors store in Truro suited me fine.  Truro has more stores than Antigonish.

rainy drive to Truro

It was a rainy drive to and from Truro, but being the co-pilot, I didn’t mind. I get to stare at Jeff, and practice winking without looking at my winking eye (impossible with my right eye), check my email, and switch Jeff’s radio away from his NFL station to Howard Stern whenever the chance arises.

I waited patiently in the truck while Jeff went to the gun show. Besides there is plenty of fantastically terrific people watching to be done at a gun show.

I lucked out and found TWO pairs of shoes at Payless Shoes. It was a BOGOHP sale (buy one, get one half price).  Both pairs I found were men’s shoes.  The women’s shoes all have sparkles or heels or tassels or other girly ridiculousness.  I said to the girl working the store that I have way better luck in their men’s aisle. She said her sister just told her the same thing when she was in there buying men’s shoes.  I got 2 casual shoes, slip ons, one brown swede pair, and a black leather pair, that will be perfect for work. Good comfortable soles for standing at my desk and walking around campus to help people with their websites:

new shoes

Honest, I’m more of a Doc Marten kind of girl, but we all know what happened to those.

We couldn’t pass up the chance to stop at the Bulk Barn because we don’t have one.  $80 later I think I’m all set for the homemade granola recipe I wanted to try (maybe bulk doesn’t equal cheap). (Bonus: If you spend enough money at the Bulk Barn, you get a free reusable shopping bag. Works well for carrying $80 of granola ingredients and dried cranberries and nuts and  jujubes for Christmas baking.) (By the way, you’ve had gummy worms before, right? The Bulk Barn has gummy RATTLE SNAKES! They are so big!!) (No I didn’t buy any.) (I did buy a few chocolate covered jujubes though so I wouldn’t eat the Christmas baking ones.)

We had a great filling lunch at the Chow Family Chinese restaurant and stopped at Giant Tiger too. I love Giant Tiger. Wish there was a closer one.  I burnt my lips and tongue desperately bad on my first bite of my beef and broccoli at lunch.  And I got lunch on my sweatshirt.  And when I tucked a napkin not so discretely in my shirt to stop my boobs from soaking up my beef and broccoli sauce, I still managed to spill a fork full of fried rice inside my shirt.  Jeff says I’m a treasure.

 

Wet night!

Weather, , ,

We finally got rain – and it was a lot of rain!

It poured all night.  And I know because I was up almost all night.

We had thunder and lightning from about 10:30pm until sometime in the wee hours.  Monty was squirrely from it, so we got up so Jeff could sleep. I sat at my computer watching a live stream from a guy on the street in Anaheim while the police shot the citizens with pepper balls and bean bags until 3:30am.

I slept on the couch so I could keep Monty calm on the floor beside me.

I was up twice after that, and then up for good at 6am.  I took Monty out (still raining a bit) and I noticed Monty’s fence was on a serious lean.

Turns out we have some sink holes!  Around each of the sonatubes in the front, and around the basement walk out – so the 2 areas he dug out.

(click on a thumbnail for the larger image, and then you can scroll through the 4 images).

Luckily there is no sink hole in the driveway from the trench, probably because he was able to drive on the trench afterwards and pack it down, but it is really soft! It felt like quick sand as I tried to quickly step over it.

The driveway looks FANTASTIC! completely unscathed! At least from the view up here!

I thought Monty was only squirrely like that when the power was flicking, but the power was steady.  He seemed to freak out with the lightning, thunder, and the hammering rain.  Maybe it is because we so rarely have a thunderstorm in Nova Scotia.  Because they are so rare, I’ve noticed people here tend to be terrified of them.

What a mess rain makes in February

PhotoBlog,

We got about 50 mm of rain last night. It blew out creeks and driveways right around the lake.

The lake is really high right now and there is a lot of debris on the frozen parts of the lake. Even a big plastic fish tote. The gravel road on the other side of the lake is a real mess. Some places it is just all big rocks that blew out of the creeks.

Here are a few photos from our drive around the lake. I missed most of the really great shot because I was too busy looking at it with my eye and not the camera.

Here is a wash out with a pail of hydraulic fluid and a big log on the road. Photo taken through a dirty truck window.

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Rain in February makes a mess

Now it’s freezing and snowing.

Our driveway is rutted really bad. I think there was too much snow in the ditching going along the driveway so the rain got impatient and used the driveway instead.

Who wants THAT?

Weather, , , ,

40-50mm of rain coming tonight, and tomorrow it is going to freeze.

Any chance we can cancel this forecast and select another?

Update:

Jeff is trying out the chains he bought for the ATV and is going up and down the driveway to see if he can bust up any of the ice.  It’s doing a bit, but not much to get rid of the ice.  The chains are doing a good job of keeping him on the driveway and not in the lake though.

So much for that. And how do I summon a bluejay?

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

We tried to take advantage of the non-frozen state of the world today by shoveling gravel into our ATV trailer and dumping it on the huge ruts the rain is carving into our driveway.

But we were only three loads in, and barely sweaty, when the tire on the wagon broke. The stem broke right off the tube so I guess that finishes that.

We got so much rain over night again the ground is completely saturated, the water has filled the drain of our sink downstairs, and I spotted 2-3 inches of daffodil growth from the first daffodils that bloom in the spring.

Where did you go bluejays?

Brian and family got us this really cool bird feeder. It is a spring/slinky like metal that wraps around a circle wire and hangs on a post. Then you fill the stretched out spring/slinky thing with whole peanuts in the shell.

Here is what the blue jays are supposed to do:

We always seem to have blue jays, and they are the first bird to discover I’ve filled the feeder, but they’ve been missing in action since I put the peanuts out there. I hope the peanuts don’t rot in the rain.

Another weather bomb

Weather, , , ,

The media is calling today’s storm a weather bomb – apparently because of the drastic pressure change in the storm.

We’re east of the heavy snow and it’s pouring rain here and the wind is supposed to gust to 100 km/hr here, and 110 km/hr over in PEI. It was 14°C this morning and is supposed to drop to 4 by this afternoon.

There are already 11,077 customers without power in the province.

I’m not expecting the need to do an hour by hour update, because it is just wind and rain, but if something exciting happens, I’ll update!

–

OK Update already,
I noticed you can see the white caps on our lake on my webcam – http://lisaschuyler.com/webcam/

–

12:47pm Another update. PEI is cut off from the rest of the world! Well at least to traffic. Ferries are stopped and the Confederation Bridge is closed to traffic. Schools are sending kids home because the power is out. (Why can’t they have school without power?) >23K customers without power now. Heavy rain seems to be over. Just windy here.

–
Next day update:

Worst part of the storm was having no internet all evening! The power was out closer to town, so one of the wireless internet towers in our network chain was down so I had to go without! At least I had power and TV.

Another wild day in Nova Scotia

Weather, , ,

Decent storm we’re having today!

Big winds, wet rain, and warm tropical air.

We’re we both up before 5am. Must have been the wind. I fell asleep again for awhile, but it is only 11:11 (hey look at that! I just looked at 11:11 on 11/11/11 !) and it feel like 3pm.

CAMWIZ_11-NOV-11_11-12-18-95 [SHOOT]

The winds are making our walls and roof creak and crack, but not to the extent of a real tropical storm when the pressure changes threaten to blow out the windows.

Over 8,000 customers are without power in the province right now. I’m sure that will keep growing with these gusts. Our’s flicked a few times, so we unplugged our newly fixed washing machine so it won’t get any more power surges.

Guess how much it costs to make a blinky blinky F71 flashing error code go away on a two year old Kenmore Elite front loader washing machine? $540. We could have bought 2 used machines for that price. What a sham. At least we can do laundry again.

If there are further storm developments, I’ll come back and update this post.

Update @ 11:25am
10,717 customers without power in Nova Scotia now

Update @ 12:06pm
Power went off briefly. Jeff told me to fill the tub with water so we can flush our toilets later because he’s sure we’re losing power. 11,346 customers without power now. Monty is flipping out. He hates it when the power flicks and everything beeps.

Update @ 12:14pm
Power went out briefly again. Monty is hiding under my desk. 13,460 customers without power now. Mom just sent me photos of all the snow they have in Listowel, ON this morning. Can’t see the grass!

Update @ 3:58pm
Getting really dark and really wild again out there. Raining heavy. Saw on Twitter that Antigonish has already received over 100mm of rain today.

Update @ 4:27pm
Power outages down to 3356 customers.

Update @ 6:02pm
Aww crap. Literally. There is a couple inches of backflow from the septic system in the basement laundry tub just now in the last 20 minutes. Rain is almost done. Radar shows it moving out. Still very windy. Guess the ground is over saturated again.