Whether there will be weather
Of course, there always is, especially in Canada — and, as the stereotype goes, we love to talk about it too. So, here goes…
We’ve had an insanely warm “winter” so far in Montreal (and many parts of Canada). On Monday and Tuesday of this week, after days of rain, I had a definite first — I saw two large earthworms on the sidewalk in the park near my house! In January! 24 hours later the poor suckers were surely long pink popsicles (or not-so-long, most things tend to shrink when exposed to cold temperatures), as the temperature dropped by 20 degrees. We had our first really cold day of the winter (-13-ish, plus very strong winds) on Wednesday. We’re not used to it, so it felt pretty miserable out there (and of course I chose that day to walk all over the city). Today we’re back to +5, but whatever’s left of that western storm should hit us Monday-Tuesday — we’ll experience some real cold then. And maybe the snow will actually stick around for our Fête des Neiges!
But we have nothing to complain about, compared to Vancouver with storm after storm battering the ancient trees of Stanley Park (and elsewhere, I imagine, though we don’t hear much about elsewhere!) and the not-so-ancient roof of the B.C. Place Stadium; or the bitter wind-chill of -48C (true temperature -36) they have today in Winnipeg! And the West spent the last few days digging out from a monster winter storm — several people even died, which is fairly rare in this land of “winter experts”.
Incidentally, in Winnipeg, the -36 degree temperatures are the lowest they’ve had in…what would you guess? Twenty years? Fifty? Nope…it hasn’t been this cold in Winnipeg since (drum roll please) — January 2005! That’s right, it’s been a whole, er, two years. So, as you can see, this is really uncommon. (-;
Meanwhile, if you’re lucky enough to have a clear sky this weekend and a view of the south-western horizon, check out Comet McNaught, before it all comes to “naught”. It is the brighest comet we’ve seen in ages, brighter than Hale-Bopp or Halley, last time they were in the neighbourhood. But it’s a bit tricky to see, especially from the city (where buildings and a nice mountain perfectly obscure my south-western horizon, not to mention the city-glow!). It’s really close to the sun so you have to check it out just after sunset, near where the sun went down.
Update: From here you can find ways to look at the comet on the web (for those of us with crappy weather). If you can wait a (long!) while for it to load, you can watch a movie of the comet appearing in the field of view of the SOHO spacecraft’s camera. Thanks to pseudonym for the link!