Apparently It’s Winter in Vancouver

Back East, they’re getting our usual weather. I heard it’s 14 degrees above the yearly average in Toronto. Meanwhile in the Lower Mainland, we all woke up to this strange white substance falling from the sky. We’ve seen it before, a few months ago, but I haven’t the foggiest as to why it’s coming down now.

My father-in-law asked me yesterday why our weather is being called so ‘unusual’ this year. It’s not the rain, really, it’s the storms. Winds, LOTS of rain, floods, slides, and snow. Not like the snowy winters we used to have when I was little, more like when you least expect it, it’ll dump a couple inches, winds will blow in sideways, and everyone is caught off guard.

We’re nestled indoors right now watching the World Jrs but we’re heading out soon to take care of some banking in Surrey. We borrowed my mom’s car today just to get this errand done (which I blogged a bit about yesterday) although driving is probably the last thing I want to do right now. I think I’ll let John take the wheel this afternoon, as a good Midwest boy he should be more used to these conditions. Unfortunately, everyone else on the roads around here, isn’t.

BC Place after roof collapse this afternoon

Update: We drove by BC Place about 10 minutes after a tear in the roof caused it to collapse. This explains why I haven’t blogged about it til now, we were on the road.

Reports at first were frantic and panicked, after a press conference about an hour later it was revealed that due to the tear, management decided to pull down the roof. Regardless, what a mess – and yet another change to the Vancouver skyline [Canada.com]

Everyone and their dog has already blogged about it (say what? breaking news stories on blogs?) but Jeremy’s got some pretty cool footage on his post of the original tear in the roof, flapping in the wind [JeremyLatham].