I like watching weather. I taught Middle School science from time to time and there was usually a unit on weather. One place I taught , there was a radiosonde station where they released the large weather balloons that rose about 20000 ft. I would take the kids on a little field trip. The balloons were released at 2:00 PM and 2:00 AM each day. The radiosonde technology is completely obsolete.
As a farm boy we watched weather.
I took my private pilot's license and that was more weather.
When I was in the north, I quite often gave the pilots our weather so that they knew whether to fly in or not. CAVU meant clear and unlimited visibility.
So a few days ago a fast moving cold front went through. There were high winds and a little snow. So the trees waved and snow blew. Visibility was limited. The whole episode was over in about 30 minutes and our temperature dropped. I watched all 30 minutes of it.
I had planned to do a post on summer solstice. I like special days and to me the summer solstice is a special day. I planned to get some photos to show our long day. I'm always impressed when the sun sets after 10 PM. Today the sun rose at 5:13 Am and sets at 10:00PM for a total of 16 hours and 47 minutes of sun.
However my special post on summer solstice was not to be.
Tuesday evening a vicious windstorm hit us again with gusts to 112 kph (70 mph) . Again there was damage done in my city. Many trees were blown down and this time buildings were damaged and about 5% of the city still does not have power. Windows were blown out in a few buildings and roof damage occurred . Some roofs were blown right off.
Fortunately I did not have any damage. Across the street a large spruce came down and landed on a house. A large poplar branch 25 cm (10 in) diameter fell at the school and the same thing happened half a block away. Most schools were closed yesterday.
So this is the second major clean up this spring.
A week ago we had a wind storm and some rain with it. The wind blew all day but the highest winds were from 4:00PM to 6:00 PM. We had gusts up to 100kph which for this location is a very strong wind.
Needless to say there was damage. There was little damage to structures but trees suffered a lot of damage. Some trees blew down in the residential areas. The dumb trees chose power lines to fall on. As a result, there were some power outages.
Out in the bush the story was different. Quite a few trees went down. Trees with some defects in the trunk broke off above the ground. Some trees were completely uprooted. It's amazing how large the root balls can be. The spruce seemed to suffer more damage but many poplars blew down as well.
This is the worst wind storm I've seen since I moved here in 1969. There was a windstorm in 1978 that took the tops off many spruce trees.
The city has worked hard to clean things up. First, they made sure that the roads were cleared. Then they cleaned off paved paths and then shale and gravel paths. Later on they will come back and haul away the debris.
