Tag Archives: webcam

I MISSED THE WHOLE THING!!!

Weather, ,

The talk of the town province this morning is all about the huge thunderstorm last night.

Went on for 4 hours. Power is out. Trees are down. >50,000 customers lost their power over night in Nova Scotia.

Apparently the rain came down in sheets, then hard as hail, and there was sheet lightning, and chain lighting, and bolts of lightning.

But I didn’t hear a thing.

I was sleepin’ like a dead fish.

The web cam took 125 pictures over night. They all look like it was daylight out – so every time there was a good flash of lightning, it took a picture. Here are a selection of them (notice the time in the corner of the photos). You can actually see a lightning bolt in the first one:

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Lighting storm - June 2, 2011

Hurricane Earl

Weather,

3:30 am. I guess going to sleep at 8:30pm was a little unnecessary because now I’m up and wide awake and waiting for some hurricane action… and it is dead still outside.

‎6:00am. Foggy, so humid and sticky. 22C. Breeze is picking up.

CBC Radio out of Halifax is broadcasting full storm coverage. Brett Anderson of Accuweather was right all along and the path is much further east than everyone else was thinking until yesterday.

We aren’t expecting the full brunt of the storm, but we are supposed to get heavy winds and some rain. Our driveway washing away is our biggest concern.

6:25am – A couple raindrops. We currently have a Wind Warning and a Tropical Storm Warning.

6:34am – Interesting – while the U.S. hurricane centre has downgraded Hurricane Earl to a tropic storm, the Canadian hurricane centre is on the radio saying they still have measurements at hurricane 1 strength.

8:46am – Not much change yet. It’s breezy with a bit of rain. It is so sticky our feet are grossly sticking to the floor. The hurricane is now supposed to hit much closer to Halifax than expected and the county we are on the border of, Guysborough county, now has a hurricane watch too.

9:30am – Power outages all over the southern end of Nova Scotia. 7,900 customers out now. Jeff is outside right now trying to dig some little trenches on the driveway to divert the approaching rain off the driveway.

9:33am – Make that 11,886 customers without power now.

9:36am – Wow – 14,547 now. Please let us keep power for awhile longer!

9:51am – 27,000 without power now. Little cooler out now. Gas truck was just blown off the road somewhere near Halifax.

10am – Waves are sounding louder on our lake now. RCMP have blocked sightseers idiots from the beaches and away from Peggy’s Cove. 29,091 without power.

10:11am – First big gust. My friend Chrissy is down near where the storm is coming ashore and her poplar tree tops are almost touching the ground from the wind!

10:31am – Windier now. Canada’s Hurricane Centre said they just saw a confirmed wind of 120kph reading from offshore buoy…so Earl is still a Category 1 storm.

10:53am – 39,457 customers without power now. Sporadic strong wind gusts here and light rain. Confederation Bridge to PEI is closed to high sided tall traffic.

11:01am – Trees and powerlines down in Halifax in advance of the storm. Power apparently flickering in Antigonish. Zeus the cat is acting a little clingy. Halifax airport is reporting 74 km/hr winds now with gusts to 104 km/hr. 43,997 houses in the dark.

11:18am – Nova Scotia Power is on the radio. Some power restoration estimate times are into Monday, but will be reassessed regularly. 56,843 customers without power. Getter wetter here. I’m getting hungry. Jeff’s thinking of bbq’ing burgers. He’s a diehard bbq – no hurricane will stop him!

11:46am – Sheets of rain coming down now. 79,728 customers out of power now. Power flicked a couple times. Jeff tested out our little generator and now is plotting to run the TV & Bell satellite TV with it, alternated with the freezer, if our power goes out.

12:12pm – 111,793 without power now. We still have power. Power is out just south of us. Very close. So far it isn’t much worse here than a normal storm. Nothing compared to Hurricane Noel… yet..

12:38pm – Getting wilder here now. Our burgers were incredible. Jeff is out surveying the driveway. We haven’t got THAT much rain so it shouldn’t be too bad. 127,933 homes without power now. White birch in front of the house is getting blown pretty good now. Jeff is cheering for it to get blown down.

12:51pm – Over 400 houses without power in our neighbourhood. Luckily not us. Jeff reports that we had a bit of erosion on the driveway so far, but the trenches he dug are doing well. Some great wind gusts once in awhile.

1:07pm – I run all my computer equipment through a UPS so I have clean power. It has kicked over to battery twice in the last few minutes indicting our incoming voltage was too high or low. I’m thinking about going down to the lake to shoot some video for you. Gusts are getting serious here now. 152,892 without power, including more and more around us.

11:45am, 2 days later – And we’re back! We only lost power for 6 hours, but power was out everywhere, including to our wireless internet towers so we had no internet, until now! Check back later – I’ll post a full post-hurricane review, with photos, and video.

–

Check back for updates.
If the webcam and I go offline, assume the power is out.
But you can follow Nova Scotia’s power outages online too:

http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/residential/outageinformation/liveoutagemap.aspx

For your live viewing pleasure… our front lawn

Weather, ,

I have been fiddling with my webcam today and I have set it up so it will updated every 60 seconds for you hurricane watchers and enthusiasts.

It is pointed out of my office window on the first storey of our house.

So you can now watch our weather, as we see it, until the power or wireless internet go down.

http://lisaschuyler.com/webcam/

Right now, there is nothing to see, except a spider who keeps walking across the window. If the hurricane follows its forecast path, rain and wind will pick up on Friday night.

I have a low light booster turned on so you can see some things at night.

If you want way better action (since we’re not on the coast), you see can several very high quality webcams at http://www.novascotiawebcams.com (including cams from Peggy’s Cove, Halifax Harbour, Bay of Fundy, Digby, and Cape Breton).

Wood racks, twinkles, travel plans, and I still love my laptop

What I've Been Up To,

As I just wrote on Facebook, I’m sitting in our living room watching the lake twinkle in the sun between the trees, and I’m thinking about cutting down trees to give us a better view of the lake.

That is a bit of a double-edged sword because if we can see more of the lake, then everyone on the lake can see more of us, and then all our nudist parties wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

We were talking to our closest neighbour a couple of weeks ago and he said when this house was built 20 year ago, it was a small field up here and there were no trees in front of the house at all, just a little scrub. He said you could see our house completely from the lake and now it is almost hidden because all the trees have grown up.

Yes, I was kidding about the nudist parties. Sheesh, relax.

Oh and Dad, the neighbour did said there was a small house up there before so the ruins up in the woods are for the house. And the well was dug 20 years ago when the original owner was about to build this house, but he couldn’t keep the water in it, so he drilled the well down here. (I wonder if that means the house was going to be back up the hill farther? I don’t know.)

So today Jeff has been building some big wood racks in the basement. Last year he built short wood carrels but we had to throw more wood down every week in the winter. The more he talks to other wood burners, the more he realizes we should have more in the house. So one of the structures was built today, and was screwed into the wall studs, and into the concrete floor. Once we get them both built, we’ll throw a bunch of this year’s wood that was delivered into the basement and see how much we can store inside. We haven’t finished the outdoor wood shed yet, so depending how much we get inside, we might lower the roof a little on the wood shelter outside before we put an actual roof on it.

Tonight we are hoping to nail down our travel plans – to Newfoundland!! We might even skip the east side of Newfoundland and St. John’s and just go up to Gros Morne on the west and up to L’Anse Aux Meadows and maybe even over to Labrador on the ferry! Have you been to Newfoundland? What would you recommend? We will only have 8 days probably, in September, and we’re planning to camp every night.

Still love my laptop. I had to download an older version of the Synaptics driver that runs the touch pad because the scroll stopped working as the Windows updates installed, and my other downloaded programs. I remember having to do the same thing with Jeff’s Compaq laptop.

A new, unavoidable con to this new laptop – it attracts dog hair like crazy! Must have a bit of a static charge!

OH! I know what I neglected to mention yesterday – this new laptop has a finger print scanner which makes me feel like a secret spy. When I start the computer, I don’t have to type in a password. Instead I scan my finger print and it recognizes it as my own!

Tired of all my blogging yet? :-) I just relocated outside to the porch swing – I’ll try out a snapshot from the built in webcam:

me

April Fools Day?

PhotoBlog,

OK who’s playing the joke on me.

See that picture I posted of the bunny?

Well he left no tracks.

Is it really a rabbit?

I walked up the driveway tonight and stopped to see the tracks from the infamous bunny that triggered my motion sensing web cam this morning.

And there are no tracks there.

None.

There are tracks from me.

No it didn’t snow.

Are we sure that is a rabbit and not a bird?

I looked up the video capture and it clearly shows a rabbit bounding westward up and over the snow pile straight ahead.

No tracks.

Do bunnies fly?

Video of Mysterious Bunny that left no tracks

Web cam images

PhotoBlog,

I have my webcam set up as a security cam, so as soon as it senses motion, it records a still shot and a movie clip and emails me a copy.

So when I’m at work I get emails with pictures of crows. And on Friday I knew that our driveway was getting cleared out!

Here are two images I was emailed already this morning:

bunny

crow

BLIZZARD STRUCK

What I've Been Up To, ,

WOW!

The blizzard hit over night and is supposed to continue until tomorrow.

Every one of our windows is covered with snow. The winds are really picking up. Supposed to hit 100 km/hr today. I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction.

If you check out my webcam, you’ll just see the snow that is covering the window! I’ll see if I can go get a broom and clean off the window.

This is exciting!!!!!!!!!!

Updates:
At 5:30am all the plows and equipment were pulled off the highways.

8:54am – While I was downstairs getting the fire going, the side door of the house blew inwards. By the time I noticed Monty was outside, there was snow in the house and I was terrified Sally got out but I eventually found her inside. The snow outside is knee deep (we had no snow yesterday) and there is 60cm more forecasted :D

11:03am – Just went out to broom off the window for the webcam again. The snow is over my big winter boots. Some of it is over my knee now. It’s extremely windy. This is an old fashioned incredible blizzard. I love it! Too bad it didn’t hit on a work day :D

11:08am – Power just went out briefly! PLEASE stay flowing Mr. Electricity. We are way too dependent on you! We have filled up 3 pails of water, and the tub.

12:05am – A dozen evening grosbeaks just flew in to our empty feeder! Just went out to fill the sunflower seed bird feeder and cleaned off the window again. You can see them on the webcam!

10:18pm – It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced a storm like this one! In the Sault it snowed a lot and I was always shoveling – but never a prolonged blizzard like this one. It’s still really gusty and snowing and drifting. Jeff had to clear out a bit of the back yard because the snow is too deep for the dogs to move around in. Glad Jeff doesn’t have to go to work tomorrow. I am curious to see how much snow is piled in the driveway but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow. It’s difficult to walk around out there!