A crazy weather day

Dec 28, 2008

This morning came in with Calgary like Chinook weather. The warm front that started coming in yesterday had settled in overnight and the day dawned with +11C. It was a beautiful morning for a walk.


Of course this meant that most of the snow had melted already.


Dec 28, 2008 pano

Most of the snow on the hill had melted. The lake iscovered with water. The dogs wanted to run down to the lake so we kept them on the leash for the whole walk.

After we got back, I checked the weather channel to see if it was going to stay mild all day. The forecast was that it would drop to -3C overnight, and there was a Wind Warning:

SEVERE GUSTY WINDS ALONG AND BEHIND A COLD FRONT.A STORM SYSTEM IS MOVING ACROSS NORTHEASTERN ONTARIO WITH A FAST-MOVING COLD FRONT DRAPING SOUTHWARDS FROM IT. THE RAIN AND UNSEASONABLY MILD TEMPERATURES HAS COME TO AN ABRUPT END WITH THE PASSAGE OF THIS FRONT. IT IS MOVING THROUGH THE EASTERN CORNER OF THE PROVINCE EARLY THIS AFTERNOON. WIDESPREAD WIND GUSTS OF 90 OR 100 KM/H ARE OCCURRING ALONG THE FRONT AS IT SWEEPS ACROSS THE LOWER GREAT LAKES. WINDS IN EXCESS OF WARNING CRITERIA WILL LAST FOR A FEW HOURS BEHIND THE FRONT AND THEN EASE SLIGHTLY BUT WILL STILL REMAIN QUITE STRONG FOR MOST OF THE AFTERNOON. THESE WINDS ARE CAPABLE OF BLOWING TREES OVER AND BRINGING DOWN HYDRO LINES AS WELL AS LOCAL DAMAGE TO SOME STRUCTURES THERE ARE NUMEROUS REPORTS OF POWER OUTAGES ACROSS MANY PORTIONS OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO. ENVIRONMENT CANADA CONTINUES TO CLOSELY MONITOR THIS SITUATION. PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST PUBLIC FORECASTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS.

I highlighted the interesting parts of the warning.

We had lunch and then went out. We saw lots of branches down all over the place. The wind was incredibly strong - it blew the Christmas tree lights out of the tree.


When we got back, we looked to see what had happened to our house because of the wind. We saw that we lost a piece of fascia and another piece was flapping, some of the soffit had come loose and was bent over but still there, and some shingles were flapping in the breeze. Fortunately I had a tube of black gooey stuff for repairing roofs and so I went up on the roof and glued down the flapping shingles, and put a nail in a couple of them for good measure. After that, I moved the ladder over and put a couple of screws in the bottom end of the fascia so it stopped flapping. The wind was so strong that it almost blew me off the roof, and the ladder wasn't quite long enough to reach to do any more so I left it for tomorrow, when hopefully the wind will be non-existent.

We got off easy - our neighbour lost a section of his roof about 10' long and 6' wide.