Is winter here already?

So... is winter here??? The light dusting of snow might make you think so, but it is only -1C but the windchill is ferocious, something like -800C. :)

Whoa!! Snow????

What???? It is snowing!! Fortunately it won't really stick around. :)

Heavy rain and Loon conflict

The high temperatures that we have had recently have built up oppressive humidity in the air. It started to let loose on Monday evening, but we had some torrential downpours on Tuesday.

Wow! Look at the rain splashing on the sidewalk!

The rain had stopped by the time of the dogs' afternoon walk. We saw some unusual loon activity. There is a nesting pair of loons on the lake, and a third loon had stopped by. One of the pair was flapping its wings and making loud calling noises as it paddled across the surface of the lake, as if it were running on the water. It made a big wake as you can see in this photo.

Loons are actually very territorial and the agitated loon was making it clear to the third loon that it was an interloper. Sorry I didn't get a photo of the territorial behaviour. I only had the old camera with me because it looked like it might rain some more...

Lake panoramas

March 2, 2010
There is general snow cover on the lake and the hill.

March 8, 2010
Almost a week later, and the road (not shown in the photo) is completely clear of snow and ice. The path taken by the fisherman down to the lake is now almost snow free.

March 9, 2010
Notice how the lake is starting to get a blue colour to it.

March 10, 2010
Still a lot of snow cover by the lookout.

March 11, 2010
Some people are ice fishing. Probably the last time. Especially with the skidoo on the ice.

March 15, 2010

March 16, 2010

March 17, 2010
The hill is now snow-free, and the lake is starting to look dark on the far side of the lake.

Walking on water

Panorama - January 30, 2010

Today was a beautiful, clear, crisp day, and very cold with the wind chill of -34C. This meant that the weather warning continued on today. I took the above panorama when I was walking on water -- frozen water, that is. This means, of course, that we were walking on the lake ice. We hadn't planned on doing this, but Tawny and Taz took off into the woods on the edge of the lake and we had to go and get them. Because it was so cold, we decided just to walk across the lake diagonally, instead of walking back up to the road and back home. Standing on the lake and looking around is always very interesting as that is a perspective that you don't normally get, as you are either at water level (if you are swimming) or about 2 feet above the surface (if you are in a canoe).

There were two cracks running along the eastern edge of the lake and I couldn't figure out what caused them. It was obvious that it was something to do with the lake ice, but beyond that, who knew?

Then we came across this chunk of ice that had been pushed up - Tawny was very interested in sniffing it for some reason -- maybe because she's a dog? That gave me an idea for an explanation. We have had a lot of wind lately and my hypothesis is that the wind pushed the whole mass of lake ice up towards the shore which could have caused the cracking by (a) pushing the ice up onto the shore where it fractured, or (b) pushing the ice against the shore where it buckled. I think this photo with Tawny likely shows (b).

Bitter cold and Bright moonlight

It was very cold today, bitter cold in fact. The high temperature today was -21C and the windchill was between -29C and -34C so the city's Health Officer published a frostbite warning - which is always done when the windchill reaches -25C.

Besides being very cold, the moonlight is very bright. I took this photo at 11:15pm with a time exposure. This photo is darker than it actually seemed.

Blizzard!!!

12:45pm, January 28, 2010

This photo was taken just behind the garage, looking toward the back yard -- you can barely make out the fence here. I posted this photo on The Weather Network's photo gallery.

12:48 pm, January 28, 2010

I took this photo when I was standing under the cedar trees behind the fence, looking toward the house. This photo doesn't do the storm justice, and it doesn't convey the bitter wind which was blowing the snow into a frenzy. In order to take this photo, I had to stand right in the middle under the tree, to get some protection from the snow so the camera didn't get covered in water.


Update: I made this post only 30 minutes after I took these photos and now the snow flurries have passed and the sun is bright through the clouds overhead. More updates below.

2:10 pm, January 28, 2010
4:30 pm, January 28, 2010

Snow panoramas

11am, Jan 26th, 2010

We had a sudden round of snow flurries around 11am. It looked like a snowstorm, but it was very short-lived.
5pm, Jan 26th, 2010

Of course, the flurries were very brief and we received less than 1 cm of the white stuff. This photo shows that it didn't even cover some of the slope on the hill that was exposed by the warm weather and rain.

Record January rainfall

A warm front moved in last night, bringing freezing rain with it. It was +6C this morning and the freezing rain was just plain rain. This photo was taken around 11am when the rain was quite heavy - not sure if you can tell in this photo. Needless to say, I expected the rain to melt a lot of the snow.

The rain finally stopped around 3pm, and I took this photo around 5pm. It was still +6C at that point, and you can see the effect of the rain and the warm temperatures on the snow. Virtually all of the snow and ice on the road has melted, and the lake is covered with large puddles of water.

According to this CBC report, Ottawa received a record 45mm of rain by 3:45pm, the previous record was 11mm. A number of roads were flooded - including parts of Highway 401 and some on/off ramps on Highway 417. Cross-country skiing trails were also closed, as was the Rideau Canal which was closed to skaters.

Crisp winter day

Yesterday was a nice bright sunny winter day, and was very nice to be outside. Freda took the dogs down to play on the lake, as the ice is completely safe by now. Today, however, was overcast and a stronger wind, so it wasn't so pleasant, as you can see from the position of the hood on Freda's coat. The dogs like running around outside anyway, Tawny more than Taz as she is more of a winter dog. In the above photo she is running and her ears are flopping around - that is very funny to see in action.

Taz likes running around outside carrying a 'bone' in his mouth - the 'bone' is really what we call the rawhide rolls that we give the dogs. Today, Taz was carrying two bones, just because he can, I guess :). If he doesn't have a bone then he will steal the throw toy away from Tawny, which makes it not so much fun for her.

I took this photo just after Freda and Taz had gone in. Taz feels the cold more than Tawny, he doesn't have the thick fur or the added 'insulation' that Tawny does, so he doesn't like to stay out for as long. Tawny was looking towards the house and watching Freda and Taz walk towards the door.

Beautiful sunset!!

Pano - January 7, 2010

We had a beautiful sunset tonight - absolutely stunningly clear and bright and accompanied, of course, by a bitterly cold wind. This panoramic photo is a composite of 12 photos. I had to manually adjust the exposure of the images before stitching them together, because of the brightness of the sun in some of them (made the rest of the image quite dark). I am very pleased with this image, maybe I'll submit this one to The Weather Network too (thanks for the suggestion, mum!).

Snowing all year

Pano - January 5, 2010

This is a picture of a snowfall. And I should tell you that it has snowed all year, every day this year! Yes, it started snowing on New Year's Eve and hasn't stopped. Oh, it hasn't been a heavy snowfall but to make up for that Mother Nature made sure that it was very cold and windy, which made it most uncomfortable to be outside - and that includes running the snow blower of course!

The above panorama photo is composed of 4 images, stitched together via Microsoft's ICE program (a free download). The only problem is that sometimes I don't get enough coverage with the photos and I get a black section somewhere - essentially a space not covered by any image. The photo above was one of them. I had two programs that I had tried before but with disappointing results for both of them, so I didn't use them. I tried again with this photo, and ImageMender worked quite well for this photo with only a few artifacts, and the leftmost branch of the tree on the right side of the photo was repaired quite well too. The other program, InPaint, didn't work very well as it stuck pieces of branches in the middle of the sky at the top of the image. Not good.

Still cold!! And still snowing!!!

Well, yesterday the forecast for today said -2C and it is -7C and high winds so it feels like almost -20C. And of course, the snow is continuing - it's a light snowfall, but still a snowfall.

The photos below are a bit blurry - sorry. The dogs were on the move and I was trying to take a photo of them before my fingers froze off.

Even though it's cold, Taz sometimes sticks his whole head under the snow to sniff something particularly wonderful.

Tawny was on the move with her Kong Wubba toy. Normally she will drop it so we can throw it and she can fetch it, but not today.

Snow snow snow...

It has been snowing since New Year's Eve. That wouldn't be so bad, except that it has been quite cold and very windy, which makes taking the dogs out for a walk somewhat on the unpleasant side. The wind made snowblowing the driveway not much fun, because it would blow the thrown snow in my face at times.... On the plus side: the snowblower made clearing the driveway much quicker than a shovel, and the cold temperature made the snowflakes much smaller, and somewhat fluffier (not heavy and wet) so the snowblower could blow them farther away.

I will have to get up at 5:20am tomorrow to clear out the driveway again so Freda can leave for work without getting stuck in the driveway. :(

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2010!

January 1st, 2010

A gentle snowfall started on New Year's Eve and continued during New Year's Day. It was a very nice temperature, about -2C, with no wind, so it was a very nice winter day. Freda's friend Susan visited, and I took this photo when she and Freda were walking back after spending some time out with Tawny. In this photo, Tawny is laying in the snow chewing a stick, having got worn out from chasing the Kong Wubba (a throw toy).

Still cold

It was really cold yesterday (Tuesday, Dec 29th) and the dogs did not want to stay out too long. I didn't either, so I didn't take the camera out. It was starting to get milder today, although it was still quite cold this morning. This is a close up of the brush that is still encased in the ice from the freezing rain. The ice decorations tinkled lightly in the breeze, like glass wind chimes, and as the dogs ran around, brushing by them.

This afternoon, Tawny sat by the fence watching for Freda to return. You can see the virtually all of the ice has falled off the sugar maple.

While Tawny was outside waiting for Freda, Taz was inside trying to nap on the couch. Taz feels the cold a lot more than Tawny so he doesn't stay out when it is chilly. I am fascinated by how he can curl his huge body up into such a small space.

This is just a photo of a pear. But what a pear - look how huge it is!

Mother Nature's Crystal Chandelier

This is the photo that inspired the title of this blog posting.

It was a beautiful mild morning - about -1C - with wonderful sunshine. That made it delightful to take the dogs out for a play.

The bright sunshine made all the ice on the trees glitter like crystal. Very pretty!

Here's a close up of some glittering branches. The photo doesn't really do it justice.

We are dog-sitting Max, the little black dog on the left of this photo. He loves playing with Tawny and Taz.

There is a house down the road under construction. There is a crane there today lifting the roof trusses into place.

The dogs all get along very well, here they are taking a quick breather before they start playing again.

The fence looks like it is a wall made of glittering ice.

The sunlight started to disappear in the late morning, shoved out of the way by the clouds. A short while later, some large fluffy snowflakes started to fall, gradually giving way to a heavier snowfall of smaller flakes. This photo was taken when the snowfall was transitioning from the large to the small snowflakes. It looks like the sun has left us for today.

Day after freezing rain

We had freezing rain yesterday, and it caused quite a burden on the younger trees and small branches. The small tree in this photo is the young sugar maple that we planted last year and is really suffering as a result. It was about 0C when I took this photo, and you could hear the ice falling off the larger trees as they moved slightly in the breeze. It was overcast so there was no sun to hasten the melting of the ice on the trees. We were going to go out to visit some friends, and it seemed to me that the weather would not be mild enough for the ice to melt off our little maple. So I went out with a bucket of tepid water and a soup ladle, and poured water over the ice on the tree, which unburdened the tree of the ice. This was the 'before' photo, of course.

The big elm out front looked very pretty with its cocoon of ice.