weather you like it or not

Pants! (I’m wearing them again)

Today is the first time since July that I’ve worn actual pants and not shorts.

It makes me sad.

It was not an unwise choice, though, as the day started cloudy, turned to showers and the temperature is dropping instead of going up, as it properly should during a summer day.

All of this also makes me sad, though the showers will make the parched grass happy. Since the next few days are forecast to be damp it’s quite possible the Fire Danger/No Smoking signs will finally come down at Burnaby Lake, the Brunette River and Hume Park. If they are removed they probably won’t go back up until May or June of next year, depending on how whimsical climate change is feeling.

It’s also four days until the last official day of summer, September 21. The sun is setting earlier, leaves are turning (the trail at Burnaby Lake isn’t quite festooned with fallen leaves yet but it’s starting) and there’s a general sense that summer 2017 is coming to an end.

Summer is my favorite seasons, so I always feel a bit down when it’s over. I like the long nights, the warm days, everything being green and alive. Early fall is not so bad but the days quickly shorten, The Rains begin and soon enough every day seems bleak and gray.

And now in preparation I’m drinking hot chocolate and the AC is off.

Bleah.

Here’s to summer 2018!

July 2017 summary: Nearly pantsless

The weather has been pretty nice in July and this week promises an actual heatwave, with temperatures climbing up over 30ºC on multiple days. Not great for all the forest fires out there burning across the province, but nice for getting a tan.

I went the entire month–save one day–without wearing pants. And I kind of regretted wearing pants the day I did.

As an aside, it seems harder than it should be to find a pair of shorts that look decent* and aren’t festooned with pockets. I only need to carry a phone, wallet and keys, not two weeks of camping supplies.

 

* what I consider decent may vary from the popular definition. It’s like art, I know it when I see it. At least when it comes to shorts.

Early summer assessment: Surprisingly okay

The last week or so of June has seen a ridge of high pressure over the area, with mainly sunny skies and highs ranging from 21 to 30 degrees, all above seasonal averages. I know we’ll pay for this somehow with something like two weeks of hail in July, but it’s been a pretty nice start to summer 2017. I actually saw bikes on the Brunette River trail kicking up dust with their tires instead of mud. It was weird.

The first day of summer, 2017: Perfectly cromulent

Today is officially the first day of summer and it defied expectations, given the weather we’ve seen so far this year. Rather than raining brimstone and fire or perhaps just letting loose with another monsoon, the day instead was a bit breezy but pleasant, with clear skies, sun and temperatures hovering just under 20ºC–right around seasonal.

It was kind of weird.

I took advantage by actually going for a walk at lunch. I admit I have a motive other than enjoying the nice weather, and that is a renewed effort to get the rest of the flab off me.

On that note, I make a solemn vow now: No more Goldfish crackers. These are like year-round shortbread for me. They are small and tasty and so it’s easy to eat five or ten or 5,000 of them before you know it.

No more.

Begone, Goldfish! You will be a lightly-salted memory from now on. As soon as I finish this bag, that is.

There’s no need to be wasteful, after all.

But anyway, the first day of summer was pretty nice.

Run 492: A run with many different branches

Run 492
Average pace: 5:34/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:39 pm
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 28:01
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 20ºC
Wind: strong with gusts
BPM: 164
Weight: 164.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3850 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch, iPhone

Tree branches, to be exact. I’ll get to this shortly.

On Friday, May 12 I came down with a rather nasty cold. I have not run since then, a span of 11 days and a total of four runs missed. Sad trombone.

Today, mostly recovered if still a bit sniffly (or it could just be allergies) I headed out to renew my efforts. I was fully expecting to be slower and my pace of 5:34/km saw my expectation met. However, I was expecting something over 5:40 so I’m actually more pleased than anything. Despite the run feeling harder, my BPM was down.

And after a curiously, even strange, long weekend of sunny, warm weather, it continued today so it was very pleasant and mild.

Except for the wind.

A cold front is moving through to the Interior and is scouring the region with winds gusting up to 70 km/h. It was windy indeed on the run, though I only once caught a really good gust that threatened to whip my cap off. I screwed it down nice and snug and it stayed put.

What didn’t stay put were the million or so leaves, twigs, and branches strewn across the trail, so many that in several spots it was impossible to avoid stepping on them. I cleared a few before starting the run, the largest being a branch over 10 feet long and about as wide around as my upper arm. I may not have giant, bulging biceps but that’s still a branch big enough to ruin your day if it bopped you on the noggin. An entire tree came down near the western gate, landing alongside and partly on the trail. I wondered how safe it might be to run at all.

Fortunately, the ferocity of the wind eased up shortly after I started so I emerged without any wood-related injuries.

Here are a few of the smaller branches I saw on the trail. Multiply this by about a hundred or two and you have an idea of what the entire trail was like.

Branching out
Being stabbed by one (or both) of these via 70 km/h wind gusts would be a unique running experience.

May: Time to construct the ark

Here’s the weather so far for the month of May:

May 1: Cloudy, a high of 9C. This is eight degrees below the average high for the month. This is February weather.

May 2: A mix of sun and cloud, high of 16C. This is almost seasonal (normal) weather.

May 3: Torrential downpour, a high of 12C by noon, well below normal. This is March weather.

They are forecasting absurdly high temperatures of 24C tomorrow, which would be well above normal. At this point, though, I think it’s quite possible that it could be raining unicorns instead because the weather no longer makes sense.

That is all.

Surviving the slushpocalypse

As the ancient prophecies foretold, the forecast of snow/freezing rain/rain unfolded on schedule and for a time there were seas of slush on the streets and lapping up onto sidewalks. But the rain was initially so relentless that it obliterated the seas of slush in short order. The following day was mild with only a few sprinkles, allowing the excess water to dry up and safely drain away. We are still left with copious amounts of snow on lawns, fields, trails and the sidewalks of Bad People.

The forecast ahead looks mild and mostly wet, so pretty normal for this time of year. The remaining snow should be gone in a few weeks, perhaps less.

THEN IT MUST NOT SNOW AGAIN THIS WINTER.

Also, no cheating by waiting until it is technically spring, either (late March). I walked past the Brunette River trail today. I predict it will be snow-free when it is technically spring (late March). I wish I was engaging in hyperbole but there’s no way in the entire universe I could be wrong about this.

Also also, my next post will not be weather-related.

The final thrashings of winter (note: may not quite be final)

The forecast overnight is what you’d come up with if you asked yourself, “What’s the worst combination of weather Vancouverites would fear to see in winter?”

  • snow starting in the afternoon, ranging from 10-40 cm depending on location
  • snow changing to freezing rain overnight or becoming the even more delightful-sounding “ice pellets”
  • as temperatures rise the freezing rain changes to regular rain (with 10-40 cm of fresh snow on top of a huge dump of existing snow)
  • oh, and winds up to 70 km/h

To be followed by a slushpocalypse, local flooding and general despair over whether we will see sunny, warm days ever again.

Still, if this is the last of the winter weather, I’ll grit my teeth and makes plans for running at Burnaby Lake sometime in March. If it snows in March I will be very cross.

What’s wrong with this weather forecast? Hint: it’s a 4-letter word

Here is the current 10-day weather forecast in convenient screenshot format:

Do you know what’s wrong with this picture? Of course you do.

Damn snow.

If this forecast was accurate, and thankfully it will probably be at least a little wrong, we could be getting up to 35 cm of new snow. This would push back being able to jog outdoors to sometime in 2018.

We should be wearing t-shirts in two weeks, not parkas. Well, maybe not t-shirts but we have had trees flowering by mid-February. That seems…unlikely this year.

Damn snow.

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Running Update, January 8, 2017 (spoiler: no running)

There is still a wacky amount of snow on the ground nearly a month after the first snowfall this winter (which technically began before it was actually winter). This means running outside is still not feasible unless I want to constantly fall down, which I do not.

It rained today and through some miracle of nature, the rain did not turn into snow, so the existing snow has been denuded somewhat. It will take a lot more of this for it to finally go away.

The good news is there is no snow in the forecast and if the forecast is at all accurate we should see temperatures climbing to 6 or 7ºC in a week or so, which will be absolutely balmy compared to the last 30 days. Mix that in with some more rain and my prediction is I’ll be able to run outside again before the end of the month, meaning I might still be able to run every month this year (outdoors).

In the meantime, I plan on substituting treadmill or elliptical workouts at the Canada Games Pool in the meantime, as I’ve got to get my slovenly fatty self back into shape even if the outside is transforming into New Arctic.