Dithery weather. Persian Radio. La Nuit

Today, this evening to be precise, well 9pm to be even more precise, I discovered by chance Vancouver Persian Radio. It is fab! I love the music they play and there was a report on today’s election. I couldn’t understand the report because I can’t speak Farsi. But I could understand the music because, well, that’s how music is. The station only plays once a week at 9pm.

I also recently discovered the Lacha Cercel & the Roma Swing Ensemble. It also was a Saturday. I conclude musical delights reveal themselves on Saturdays.

To celebrate Bloomsday manana I watched two documentaries: one to help me muster the will to wash the dishes, on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and amateur pedlars of enriched uranium and then a piece about alien abductees in the UK. Neither have any relation to Bloomsday except I think it calls for variety. Worrying nuclear facts also have a speeding up effect on doing the washing-up.

I am reading Michele Bernstein La Nuit or The Night in a translation by Clodagh Kinsella and its sister book After The Night — a detournement set in London, which I already dug into because I couldn’t wait and am reading it concurrently rather than consecutively. I concurrently have Brigid Brophy’s Beardsley and his world on the perch and Don’t Never Forget.

The weather the past two days has been dithery. Overcast and then a bit of sun before it resorts to dithery. There was a terrific rain event on Wednesday morning past. I have titled it the Timpani and Gush event. In the afternoon a tornado hit Edmonton. I like to imagine the two events were connected. I think the science would prove otherwise. I practice interpretive weather observations rather than the solid factual pointy point type. Also, weather naysayers with their heads stuck in a bowl of lime … you can never run out of things to say about the weather. If you do, make them up. Obviously.

A two night sudden temperature dip that I noticed firstly because an extreme weather warning was issued for the homeless and it caught my eye. -2 last night and it will settle around -1 tonight.

Yesterday I noticed a man I have seen over a dozen years on various streets. The first years I saw him he was always on his bicycle and seemed purposeful. He clearly had some mental health struggles but he looked like he had shelter and seemed quite functional. In recent years he has plunged and is now clearly sleeping rough, he looks fragile and bashed about by life. Every time I see him it’s such a reminder of what happens to the vulnerable when mental health support, affordable, subsidized or sheltered housing and pro-active medical care do not kick in. (a troika rather than 4 pillars) Deeply saddening and alarming.  He’s not the only one, I’ve noticed many others.  I cannot fathom how they endure the cold nights they must face. My mind turns to them as the temperature falls or the icy wind hits.

Yesterday I noticed Mrs Cropper’s first crocuses were coming up. Today there’s a snowfall warning in effect and I had to wear a hat for my short run past Mrs Cropper’s soon-to-be-frozen crocuses.

Big storm overnight, the wind was literally performing battering contractions at the window beside my head. It woke me repeatedly and had a very distinct sound. It took place while people slept, I wonder how many were aware/unaware of it?

80,000 lost power, reports say.

I just met a former-politician, fortunately there were three plates of potatoes nearby that I was able to recover with, while for his part our conversation appeared to send him hurtling towards the front door. The last time I met a former-politician there were 15 pumpkins in attendance and we were already outdoors. Progress indeed.

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It is the return of the insomniac weather report: outside right now if you are sensibly asleep you are missing a -4 weather event. But in feels like terms it’s a -8.

This plunge which I had been waiting for (prev. noted as the Nov 16th weather event) has materialized. This is our coldest night and temperature so far this winter season.

We are due in next days to move into a warmer weather pattern, but I don’t quite accept the figures. I will be watching tomorrow night curiously.

The long range forecast looks very cold for the week of Dec 12-18.

I am thrilled to see people arriving at my blog with “weather” related search terms and especially Vancouver weather related inquiries. Yes! I have landed as a weather forecaster (or rather past-caster). To this end I note today as a perfect Autumn (Fall) day. Fresh bit of wind, dry, snatches of sunshine to be got. Ruddy cheeked freshen up weather!

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The overnight lows are falling. We wait in anticipation of the promised La Nina freeze yer arse off winter. I must find some good online thermal links. Get out the knitting needles. I am convinced much malaise can be dissipated by the gentle act of knitting.

Quite an extraordinary fog event is taking place outside. It is the strongest fog event so far this Autumn and in my particular 2m of it it is infused with a profuse smell of skunk.

Hitherto referred to as the skunky fog event.

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The precise patch where the woman exclaimed on the leaves the other day was being packed inside a dozen banana boxes when I passed it the next day. I found that terribly organized collecting leaves into boxes. I wonder if they’re being shipped somewhere!

The young man scooping them up even had a dolly for the boxes.

It’s a low one. My weather station suggests 6.7 degrees, but may be sluggish about the batteries. Environment Canada says it’s 8 degrees and foggy. That would be the third fog event this season.

The kettle is on! The blankets are primed! Uncork the hot water bottle….

We had these past days a blustery weather event, with 2 wind warnings. I have never seen the title Wind Warning 2 on a wind warning so must try to figure out if it’s a higher class of wind warning. I was so consumed paying attention to the said bluster and drenching that I have little to report. This is the problem with past-casting rather than forecasting. What I am actually interested in capturing would be “right-in-the-middle” of it descriptions. But working life and feeding the chickens prevails over such indulgences.

The colour of the day during the storms was fascinating. Above the wallpaper paste pulpy usual, but yesterday my small male was unwell so I dispatched to fetch him various medicaments and during my journey was quite overcome by the beauty to be found in the moodiness that the weather was creating. There’s a fresh aroma that comes from those storms that reminds me so much of the West of Ireland, where the wind maintains a permanent rhapsody approx 11.5 months of the year.  I am often astonished at the predicted wind speeds the forecast shows for the region my mother lives in and how her house remains upright. Thank Christ for stone, I suppose.

1.22am. A moment when I wish night was day. An unusual weather event is taking place at this hour, an uneven windstorm. The gusts come intermittently and they blow in shapes like big old beer bellies. A bellows kind of bluster. Short blasts. 2 to 3 seconds and then give way. Inbetween there is a strange hum in the air. The wind is not cold. It’s 13 degrees and fresh. It smells like Mayo wind, except Mayo wind would never pause for prayer or thought or inhale the way this one does. There is a howl off it, which again is rare for urban Vancouver wind. Naturally I stuck my head out the window to examine and partake and noted no one else has their head out there at this hour. But if they did, they’d have seen black cloud barrelling North, yes North. Normally the clouds travel West when I look at them from this angle.  Single taxis travel the street but you could list everything in the fridge and cupboards aloud in the time that lapses between them.