Jerseygirl

1st September is when the switch is flicked…humidity and temp drop. It was the same when we lived in New Jersey…you could set the clock by it. I always thought it odd that one day can make such a difference.

Tumbling_Dice

That's funny. Yesterday was pretty humid here, today is blue sky, warm and no humidity at all.

caretaker

My friend sent a pic of the hail in his yard last night then this morning sent before and after shots of the tomatoes.













Other parts of town got plastered:

scrubbedexpat091

So much hail it looks like snow. Our tomato plants were thrown out over the weekend, they were done for the season, production was pretty poor, the plants + dirt cost more than the plants returned in food, so lesson learned, growing things yourself isn't always cheaper, but it did give me something to do for 10 minutes a day...so that is a plus, but I imagine for growing anything to a point where its cheaper to grow yourself requires a fairly large garden such as your friend has.

I have a love hate relationship with winter, I love the cold weather, and potential for snow, but I hate the short days so much, a little over 8 hours of daylight is just too short, those 4:15pm sunsets I have never gotten used to.

Sure the days are shorter in San Diego too in winter, but at least they still get 10 hours of daylight on the shortest winter days, which makes a difference, probably while seasonal depression is lower there vs Seattle and Vancouver and region.

Toronto gets about an hour more daylight than Southern BC, Toronto is further south than BC and its enough to add almost an hour of daylight to their day.

caretaker

Toronto can get inches of ice all over everything; dangerous as all get-out. I'd rather have the cold.

scrubbedexpat091

The ice the winter I was in Port Hope (about 90 minutes from Toronto) made it difficult a few times to walk around outside, I also slipped a couple times, which was not fun.

My experiment living in Ontario was interesting, but I am in no hurry to go back.

scrubbedexpat091

June heatwave deadliest weather event known to have occurred in Canada.

If these heatwave events are expected to get worse with climate change, might be time to think about mandatory air-conditioning in all new build apartments and condos going forward.

The last deadly heatwave was in 2009, when 110 people died, but apparently they are to become more frequent.

scrubbedexpat091

BC coroner has the final results from the heat wave, 595 heat related deaths during rhe week of the heat wave with 526 deaths June 25 to July 1 during the peak.

The lack of paramedics and long 9-11 wait times during the heat wave contributed as well, people in distress had trouble getting the help they needed, there were reports of several hour waits for paramedics to arrive.

three-quarters of the deaths recorded between June 25 and July 1 occurred in the Fraser (273) and Vancouver Coastal (120) health regions which isn't a surprise, they are the 2 most populated areas but also the least likely to have air conditioning standard in homes.

69% of deaths were in persons over 70, the rest in the 19-69 age group as no childten died.

BC Coroners will convene a death review panel to make reccomendations to try and prevent a repeat from happening.

The big question is why did BC see such a significant number of deaths compared to Washington and Oregon, we need to look to see what they did differently, more access to air conditoned places? More homes with air conditioning? Better emergency medical system? Combo of both?

Washington had 112 deaths and Oregon 116 so combined those 2 states still had considerably less deaths compared to BC, hopefully the death panel will look south to see what was done there vs here and find ways to prevent so many deaths in the next heatwave.