I just took a quick look at the Coquihala webcams… the flight wasn’t cheap, but not having to deal with these roads…. well, suffice to say that the flight was worth it. It’s actually hard to believe these pictures considering I took the third photo this afternoon between Vernon and Lumby!
I love Vancouver, no secret there. There are so many great things about this city. It has a consistent climate, no particularly harsh winters, no particularly crazy hot humid summers. We have wonderful cultural diversity, great theatres, and the most amazing environment. We have the mountains out our backdoor, and the ocean in our front yard. We have quick and easy (relatively) access to the US. We have an international airport that allows us to get to far away places without annoying (and expensive) internal puddle jumps. We have a rich flora and fauna.
But Vancouver excels at one thing in particular.
Precipitation!
I grew up knowing the names of different kinds of snow. Sugar snow, corn snow, powder, hardpack, slush. And it came down as sleet, blizzards, flurries, crystals, flakes, ice needles, dust. It could be wet or dry snow.
But then I moved to the coast and discovered that rain is more than something that shows up, dumps, and leaves shortly thereafter. Up North it was usually something you could wait out. Not so here. You’ll be waiting a long time….
But it is a rain forest after all. And its because of that rain that we have the fabulous environment we do. You don’t get great cedar forests with beds of ferns under them in dry desert areas. You don’t get those wonderful dripping mosses without rain and dampness. And you don’t get that wonderful loamy forest floor that gently thuds under your feet as you walk in the deep heavy shadows of coastal giants. You can’t grow rhododendrons year round, outside, in the ground, where the thermometer dips below -15C on a regular basis. We have cherry blossoms in February (sometimes earlier) and we can grow palm trees in our gardens. And you can even have a wedding in February, and wear an off the shoulder dress, with no wrap, and do a photo shoot on the beach in glorious sun and 17C weather! Can’t do THAT everywhere in Canada! (OK, OK, so we were just really lucky!).
When I first moved here I found the rain depressing. When the clouds move in they can last for weeks. The grey is enough to drive anyone with a depressive personality over the deep end. So you either learn to appreciate it, or you leave. Obviously an awful lot of people appreciate it… but not everyone.
Years ago my father was seeing a woman who obviously wasn’t a rain lover. She came to visit and as we were heading out she exclained, “Oh, I need to cover my hair, it’s raining out!” It was really just misting lightly and we tossed back at her “This? Oh this is just Vancouver humidity!”
We went to Hawaii for my brother’s wedding 14 years ago. (And we saw some pretty serious rain there I might add) On our way home we were seated with an older couple heading for Vancouver. We asked them if they were going on business. No, they were going for a vacation. We asked where they lived. In Hawaii. We looked at each other and clarified….. “You live in Hawaii…. and you are going to Vancouver…. on a holiday…. ……. …… …… in November!” “Yes, why do you ask like that?” Kirk and I looked at each other again and then posed the question….. “Did you bring rain gear?” “No… why?” The plane landed shortly thereafter and the rain was pelting down. The man looked at us and said “I think I want to go home.” Vancouver in November, not a place for the faint of heart and a fear of being wet.
Rain is always a topic in Vancouver. David Duchovny couldn’t stand it apparently. In an interview during the latter years of filming the X-Files here he was quoted as saying “
“Vancouver is a very nice place if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day,” “It is kind of like a tropical rain forest without the tropics. More like an Ice Age rain forest.” Apparently faint of heart and a serious fear of being wet…also a bit of an exaggerator. He received a serious amount of flak from Vancouverites.
Five day forecasts are a crapshoot and even the weather forecasters know that I think. The weather can change so fast here on the coast. Systems can stall and hang out for longer than expected, or break up and disappear, or sheer off in another direction completely. I really do get a kick out of the weather forecasts when the rainy season arrives. A sampling…
- Cloudy with periods of rain
- Cloudy with showers
- Scattered showers with periods of heavy rain
- Driving rain with periods of patchy drizzle
- Rain with a chance of thunderstorms
- Light rain, heavy near the mountains (this one is fairly common, guess where I live)
Rain has as many descriptives as snow does. Driving rain, pounding rain, pelting rain, drizzle, showers, downpours, cloudbursts, squalls, heavy rain, light rain, and of course, just …rain. It can be spitting out, or maybe it’s just misting, or maybe the weather is just damp. Rain can come straight down or it can come sideways (I hate that particular kind because an umbrella becomes almost useless!) and it can be rain mixed with snow. The rain can fall, drip, cascade, or pour and it can even come down in sheets. The skies can be heavy, leaden, grey, dark, stormy, granite, iron, forbidding, ominous, sombre. The weather can soak you, wet you through, leave you wringing out your clothes, and leave you greeting people with phrases such as “Great weather … if you’re a duck!”
It doesn’t always rain here, although we’ve had some spectacular periods over the years. In 2006 we almost beat a record. It rained for 28 days straight. If we had rained a measurable amount on day 29 we would have beat a record set in 1953. There’s a certain irony that most peopel were actually miffed that we didn’t get rained on that final day. Seriously…if you’re going to be dumped on that much, make it worthwhile! Let’s have something morbid to brag about! But no…we didn’t “quite” make it. Personally I’d rather not make another attempt at it, but I’m sure we will at some point, hopefully not this coming February when we need all the snow we can get…. and this with an El Nino brewing…. this past winter we set some records for snowfall, and I believe this summer we set records for forest fires. Who knows what will come this fall.
But for the moment, it is raining. I drove Kirk to the airport this morning and it was pouring. Driving rain on the way home, dark wet streets that make it difficult to determine where the lines on the road are, an obscenely early hour. At least the traffic was light.
But in the end, after a long hot, very dry summer (very little precipitation since sometime in April), the rain is welcome and it washes away dust and brings a relief to the forests and the rivers and streams that need the water influx so badly.
And it makes the air smell so wonderful.
I have grown to love this place, and everything that comes with it…. and that includes the rains, because it isn’t as bad as its reputation, and when it does rain, it always stops, and the sun comes out again….