Vancouver’s weather has been sufficiently bad this winter to have made the national news a few times, and if you follow any local online voices, you may be growing tired of our whining about the weather. Well, I’m going to publish a few pictures of the carnage anyhow.

The problem is that the city isn’t really set up for snow, particularly multiple feet of snow that stays on the ground for weeks, particularly where it’s on narrow local streets with nowhere for snowplows (if we had any) to put it. So there are cars that have been buried since sometime in the middle of December.

Snow-buried cars, Vancouver, January 2009

Of course, people are out shoveling, day after day after day.

People shoveling snow, Vancouver, January 2009

Some people have special snow-shoveling issues.

Shoveling snow off a rooftop, Vancouver, January 2009

And today on January fourth, as the dusk settled, the situation was not improving.

Heavy snow in Vancouver, January 2009

The theory says I’m driving my boy to his first school session of the new year starting at 8:30 tomorrow. I wonder.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: crayz (Jan 04 2009, at 23:20)

Don't consider myself that good a photographer, but would those photos have been better with a little EV+1?

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From: Dave Orchard (Jan 04 2009, at 23:46)

My guess is no school tomorrow. Our kids go back on Tuesday so fingers crossed for the oft-promised warming and rain.

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From: Patrick Quinn-Graham (Jan 04 2009, at 23:53)

I'm certainly not looking forward to my walk to the office through the snow through downtown Vancouver tomorrow morning.

Though that's as much to do with being on holiday for the last 2 weeks as it is to do with the snow.

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From: Steve Loughran (Jan 05 2009, at 01:33)

Walk the sprog to school; the enjoy snow and rain and it stops them getting lazy.

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From: antebarac (Jan 05 2009, at 01:57)

Wikipedia says: "On average, snow falls on only eleven days per year, with only three days receiving 6 centimetres (2.4 in) or more."

Not this year I guess :-)

IMHO +1 EV would have blown out the snow part to oblivion...

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From: Tony Fisk (Jan 05 2009, at 04:29)

It would seem that the situation calls for barrel staves or tennis racquets strapped to the feet.

The sights bring back fond? memories of being hauled back from Perth WA at +40 degrees to be sent to Rochester MN at -20 degrees... and of trying to drive to work on the wrong side of the road while avoiding other cars emulating dodgems on an ice rink.

In the end I slithered to a standstill... and then slithered sideways into a ditch

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From: John Cowan (Jan 05 2009, at 06:50)

People dumb enough to build houses with flat roofs in temperate climates deserve what they get, say I. There's a reason for all that canting and hipping.

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From: Jim Pick (Jan 05 2009, at 06:53)

Living downtown, it's been kind of nice. Because of the holidays and the bad roads, downtown has been a ghost town (relatively speaking). Mostly just locals at the cafes and the central library. It feels a bit more like a small town. The weather has been bad for business, of course, and it's rough for the homeless.

Other than the sad state of the sidewalks, it hasn't inflicted that much inconvenience on people that aren't dependent on the automobile.

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From: Dethe Elza (Jan 05 2009, at 09:33)

And the weather prediction yesterday was for rain, so I drove to Coquitlam for a little shopping, then came out to inches of new snow and more coming down fast. It took 20 minutes to get there and 2 hair-raising hours to get home again. The schools are open, though, my wife got our two there (barely).

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From: Joseph (Jan 05 2009, at 16:15)

I feel your pain. Seattle is experiencing the exact same thing.

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From: Charles Ditzel (Jan 05 2009, at 17:31)

It has been a snow carnage in Seattle as well. Over the holidays the car didn't move. And when we thought it was over there was a last blast of snow last night - we got about 5 inches. Today it is almost gone - thanks to warmer rain.

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January 04, 2009
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