Cooler and damper here than usual, though for obvious reasons I’m not complaining. Our serviceberry shrubs are full of berries which we are finding a way of sharing equitably with our wildlife. (In general, the higher the berry, the harder it is for us to pick it and the easier it is for them. And vice-versa.)
Listening to early Granados which is sort of like Chopin with Spanish accent.
Thanks @Piglet ! Around here it was about 35 degrees in the afternoon (40+ with humidex) so we took refuge inside most of the day. Cooled down a bit for dinner and a post-dinner walk.
We tried to watch the fireworks from a hill outside the town, but were chased home by the mosquitoes. They were out for blood, and got it. For a few minutes it looked great - the whole horizon lighting up. Now we're waiting for the neighbours to set off firecrackers under the bridge...
Did you get hit by a thunderstorm @Stercus Tauri ? There was one that was supposed to hit us with ferocious rain and wind around dinner time but fortunately it wimped out and sort of dispersed north and south of us.
Yes - we got it, but not too fiercely down here. The city had to cancel their fireworks because it was so blustery around the park and their set-up was damaged. It was a calm evening after that and there were plenty of small displays. The neighbours never did show up under the bridge!
Hello all, from a not-currently-flooded part of Manitoba.
I think we got Irish weather by mistake, and Ireland mistakenly received our usual heatwave. It has been raining and raining and raining, punctuated by the odd very hot day, in order to enhance mosquito development. The garden looks fantastic, as do the weeds, because it rains too much to finish the weeding.
I was in Toronto briefly, attending my nephew's Call to the Bar. Despite having lived in Toronto, I somehow never got inside Roy Thompson Hall until recently. It was surprising to be in a concert venue without screens - it really seems dedicated to audio quality. (It was also surprising to see how many law school graduates were unable to follow the instructions of "stop on the circle and wave to your family, stop on the line and bow to the Registrar." )
They did a major sound-related renovation of RTH about 20+ years ago - the acoustics before then were notoriously bad and much worse than the venue (Massey Hall) that RTH was supposed to replace. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that as best I can recall my first time in RTH was probably for Ms Marsupial’s call to the bar just around the time the renovation was completed (or possibly come to think of it for a friend of hers who had graduated earlier and invited quite a few us to her call).
I was talking to parents yesterday and they told me about the flooding and closure of the hospital in Dauphin. My mother spent much of her childhood in Dauphin where her father was a doctor so it is somewhat personal.
The smoke from north west Ontario is really bad in the south west this morning - foul smelling and poor visibility. I wonder if there are industrial or landfill fires involved? There seems to be a strong suggestion of burning plastics in it..
I think we got up to 37, with a higher humidex. We set a record of some kind. And then as @Stercus Tauri says the day after we immediately set another record for poor air quality - the skies looked quite apocalyptic yesterday.
I hadn’t heard of any kind of industrial fire but it would be consistent with what we were seeing and smelling yesterday. (A small but important bit of electronics in our HVAC controls burnt out a few weeks ago and it’s a familiar smell - we had to turn the whole system off because the result of the failure was that the thermostat was trying to cool the house by turning on the furnace.)
At least the air isn't yellow this morning here and we can see the sun, but it's still smoky. The Anglican church has a sign outside saying something like, "If you think this is hotter than Hell, you are wrong!"
Our air quality is generally improving here, not so much for others apparently.
We have your smoke now, thanks very much. Winds shifted suddenly.
I will admit to a small amount of schadenfreude with the GTA experiencing the wildfire smoke. Manitoba had lots of it last year. Communities were displaced by the fires, and urban dwellers found themselves in clouds of smoke ranging from nauseating to dangerous. But it's not "real" unless folks in the GTA experience it, and then it becomes A Thing. Did you know this is A Thing?!
It rained practically all day yesterday. Some badly need rain for our local greenery though not ideally timed for our plan to have our friends over for dinner on our garden patio. Oh well.
Apparently my Public Service job is safe. Tbe announced SERLO (Selrction of Employees fir Eetention or Layoff) will be cancelled when the Director-General signs the paperwork. Cutbacks have been satisfied through attrition.
When I was living in Washington DC as a student I used to take a keen interest in the airlines’ ads for prices to home (then either Toronto or Ottawa, both in Ontario, Canada, depending on whether I wanted to visit friends on the way to visiting family). It took me a while to realize that if I ever booked a flight to Ontario, CA, it would take me a long ways away from home.
Not quite as far as some tourists were when they landed in Sydney, NS, thinking they were going to Australia.
In another goof, when there was an Anglican conference in St John's, NL, some of the delegates turned up in Saint John, NB, and even one or two in St John's, Antigua ...
Hmm. NB to NL may be a solvable problem; Antigua to NL not so much. It reminds me of @Augustine the Aleut’s Camino contacts who discovered a great deal on flights to Santiago… Chile.
We've never experienced tornado warnings before. Yesterday evening the phones were giving them out every few minutes. I don't think there was an actual tornado near here, but there were very high winds and heavy rain for about an hour. I was on the road near Burlington - rather nerve wracking. I managed to get off the road, but others seemed to enjoy speeding and tailgating much as usual in the horizontal rain.
I wondered if anyone there had been caught in the storms! Glad you were able to get off the road safely. Certainly no one on the 401 seems familiar with the concept of "leaving a safe distance between you and the car ahead of you".
I had a relatively uneventful trip home yesterday but it was a bit exciting for many people. To top things off we had a fire alarm go off on at our office which put the elevators out of service. So one of my colleagues walked down 20+ flights of stairs before taking three streetcars and then having to navigate her street that had become a river with fallen trees and power lines….
Today I received an official email, signed by the Director of my programme stating that my Affected status for SERLO (layoff) has been rescinded. My job is safe.
Cooler, wetter, and (sigh) darker these days. I wish the solar seasons and meteorological seasons here lined up in a more organized way… we had plenty of sunlight to eat dinner outside in late April/early May but the temperatures were prohibitive, and we still have a good month or so of seasonable weather to go but darkness is coming too soon.
Comments
Listening to early Granados which is sort of like Chopin with Spanish accent.
🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
I think we got Irish weather by mistake, and Ireland mistakenly received our usual heatwave. It has been raining and raining and raining, punctuated by the odd very hot day, in order to enhance mosquito development. The garden looks fantastic, as do the weeds, because it rains too much to finish the weeding.
I was in Toronto briefly, attending my nephew's Call to the Bar. Despite having lived in Toronto, I somehow never got inside Roy Thompson Hall until recently. It was surprising to be in a concert venue without screens - it really seems dedicated to audio quality. (It was also surprising to see how many law school graduates were unable to follow the instructions of "stop on the circle and wave to your family, stop on the line and bow to the Registrar."
They did a major sound-related renovation of RTH about 20+ years ago - the acoustics before then were notoriously bad and much worse than the venue (Massey Hall) that RTH was supposed to replace. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that as best I can recall my first time in RTH was probably for Ms Marsupial’s call to the bar just around the time the renovation was completed (or possibly come to think of it for a friend of hers who had graduated earlier and invited quite a few us to her call).
I was talking to parents yesterday and they told me about the flooding and closure of the hospital in Dauphin. My mother spent much of her childhood in Dauphin where her father was a doctor so it is somewhat personal.
Would you care to define "hot"?
Enquiring Scottish minds need to know!
I hadn’t heard of any kind of industrial fire but it would be consistent with what we were seeing and smelling yesterday. (A small but important bit of electronics in our HVAC controls burnt out a few weeks ago and it’s a familiar smell - we had to turn the whole system off because the result of the failure was that the thermostat was trying to cool the house by turning on the furnace.)
Our air quality is generally improving here, not so much for others apparently.
We have your smoke now, thanks very much. Winds shifted suddenly.
I will admit to a small amount of schadenfreude with the GTA experiencing the wildfire smoke. Manitoba had lots of it last year. Communities were displaced by the fires, and urban dwellers found themselves in clouds of smoke ranging from nauseating to dangerous. But it's not "real" unless folks in the GTA experience it, and then it becomes A Thing. Did you know this is A Thing?!
We are now getting some welcome rain.
Yes glad to hear it!
Somewhat cool and grey here. I was thinking of biking down to the lake (yes that lake @ChastMastr
What he said! ^^ 🇨🇦
In another goof, when there was an Anglican conference in St John's, NL, some of the delegates turned up in Saint John, NB, and even one or two in St John's, Antigua ...