|
Sweet Mama Nature, take off your skirt! Mother Nature has been smoking up. No seriously. Yesterday it was 24 degrees in Edmonton. Yes, you read that right twenty-four, light breeze, partly cloudy but mainly sunny. The weather was actually perfect. The robins were singing, the wasps were buzzing, and you could practically hear the green grass growing. Mama Nature was not only showing a little leg, she had taken the whole damn skirt off and was running around on the lawn in her undies. Tease.This morning it�s back to an even zero degrees. It�s snowing: big lazy flakes drifting gracefully down to carpet the lawns, blanketing the budding growth. The air is filled with fluffy flakes swirling like albino fireflies in the drab and colorless air. The puddles on the pavement splash as workers huddled in their jackets hurry to catch the bus. After a day of rejoicing in spring, people are cranky, worn out and dispirited to be back in winter. Traffic has slowed to a crawl; the drivers peering through the snow haze at the blinking lights ahead, wondering where spring has gone. Mother Nature has come down from her high, put back on her skirt and firmly added her long johns for good measure. The weather just wasn�t like this when I was a kid. It seems like the weather patterns started changing when I finished elementary school. In elementary we always had snow by Halloween but it wasn�t necessarily too cold to have to wear an entire snowsuit over your costume. Snow in the winters was normally hip deep, and I haven�t grown in height since the fourth grade. Summer was summer; there were no real snowstorms from May through October. Now there�s not enough snow in winter, with the snow coming late, leaving early, then returning with a vengeance when we least expect it, and drought in the summer is punctuated by flurries. July 31, 1987 brought the Edmonton Tornado (this ain�t Kansas, Toto) that shocked us all out of our false sense of security in the North. The tornado ravaged our city for over an hour accompanied by extremely heavy rainfall, funnel clouds, two spin-off tornados, giant hailstones which collectively damaged nearly every part of our city. It was Canada�s second worst tornado, causing 27 deaths and hundreds of injuries (the worst occurred in Regina in 1912). In 1988 we had a massive snowstorm at the end of May that dumped a huge pile of wet snow on us, knocking all of the new blossoms and buds off of the trees. The Great Blizzard (the Canadian Government's name, not mine) of January 29 - 31, 1989 actually closed schools for a week (which never happens in Edmonton). September 1999 through January 2000 was the driest period in southern Alberta in the past 115 years. On December 27 and 28, 1999 it was so warm in parts of Alberta (as high as 21C) that grass fires broke out and trees sprouted leaves. It was hotter in Alberta than in parts of Mexico. July 14, 2000 brought the Pine Lake Tornado, which killed eleven people. The storm that led to the tornado originated over Sundre area, where I worked that summer. Is it just that I was too young to recall the severe weather events before 1986, or are we actually having greater and more frequent severe weather than before? I don�t know. Maybe the weathergeek can tell. I�m sure it�s been studied and I have looked back in Environment Canada�s online records. This is how it looks to me: weather was normal when I was a kid and now it�s all messed up. I suppose that it�s really no surprise that the weather is as messed up as it is, considering the drugs and poisons we pour down Mother Nature�s throat (�You like that toxic sewage? Here, have a shot of heavy metals with a greenhouse gas chaser.�) ---------------------------------------- Things are looking up in my life, much like yesterday�s little bubble of spring. My horrible-worst-in-my-career assignment is done and I somehow managed to pull off an 83. Most of my errors were in formatting and I achieved a 90% on the content. Buoyed up by my success, I decided to talk to my prof about the possibilities of graduate study. She gave me a list of professors to talk to as potential supervisors and told me that I would do well in graduate studies, judging both by my assignment (which she said was an 8 or 9 paper) and by the questions that I asked in class. WHOOO! Maybe I�m not too dumb after all! That same day Bear got offered the job he wanted (DOUBLE WHOO!!). He�s working for the city again, trouble-shooting for a migration team. This means that he has a job for another 8 months and the chance to apply for permanent positions again. Another 8 months of paying off debt and getting closer to things like buying a house. Also WHOO! Bear's flex days also match with mine (TRIPLE WHOO!!!) and so it's just a matter of time before we're off and camping. I would give anything to have been camping in yesterday's gorgeous weather with my Bear. He even promises that he won't try to eat the cooler or chase me up a tree. I just hope Mother Nature will be good to us in May and not dump another nasty surprise on us. 2004-03-31 || 10:31 p.m. |
