April showers? More like April FLASH BLIZZARDS
So remember that run I did on Tuesday in the cold and snow?
Remember how it started snowing partway through the run and I got a little cold, but it actually wasn’t too horrible?
HA.
Buckle up.
So today it wasn’t supposed to start snowing until a little later, and even then, it was only supposed to be light snow.
A skiff, if you will.
It wasn’t supposed to amount to much.
So I leave to go running and it start snowing lightly. I’m like, okay, cool, whatev. This should stop soon. But the closer I got to the trail, the harder it started snowing. And by the time I was ready to start running, there was at least a quarter of an inch on the ground already.
But I’m stubborn as all hell, so I was like screw this, I’mma run.
And so I did.
And it kept snowing.
So I ran through 2.5-3 inches of wet snow. All 15 miles. And it was snowing these big, wet, obnoxious flakes the whole time; I had to take my glasses off about three miles into the run because I kept having to clear the snow off my lenses every thirty seconds or so.
I’m not exaggerating.
The last two miles were the worst, though, because I was back on the busier part of the trail, meaning – even in this garbage weather – there were tracks in the slushy snow which made it EXTRA HARD to get any sort of traction. It was a very slow, annoying two miles.
I got home and was 100% soaking wet.
At least my hat got cleaned, haha.
Brrrrrr
I got snowed on while running this morning and OH MY GOD I got so wet and cold.
You’d think we’d be snow-free near the end of April, right?
WRONG
Ugh.
Y’know what?
It’d be nice if it was WARM during any of my breaks.
Hell, it doesn’t even have to be warm. Just be above -20, please. That’s all I want.
Seriously. I was stuck inside for the WHOLE WINTER BREAK because it was consistently below -30 for like an entire month.
And now? It’s Reading Week and it’s ONCE AGAIN freezing cold out there.
Ugh. I just wanna run/walk outside while I don’t have to worry about getting back in time for lectures.
Rant over.
Yeah, Pretty Much
And -22 is NOT that cold of a temperature for Calgary. Just sayin’.
One thing can be said about Calgary’s weather:
It’s never a half-assed attempt.
Is it winter? A WHOLE WEEK OF -30 DEGREE TEMPS!
Is it a snowstorm? A WHOLE FOOT OF SNOW PLUS SNOW DRIFTS!
Is it a windstorm? JUST KIDDING, TORNADO, BITCHES!
So today it rained, which means it rained like this:
The video doesn’t really capture the intensity. This also went on for like half an hour. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it rain so much for so long.
I don’t mind rain if I don’t have to be out in it. I didn’t have to be out in this, so HOORAY RAIN!
Hey Pacific and Inland Northwest!
Y’all enjoying this heatwave? Are you having a super good time trying not to die?
Well, get used to it. This is our future. Summers will be this hot or hotter, these heatwaves will become so normal they won’t even call them “heatwaves” anymore, there will be droughts and general water shortages, and everything will be on fire.
Exciting, huh? I can’t wait!!!!!!
F-F-F-FIRE!
So British Columbia is on fire. Lytton, BC was actually literally engulfed in flames and everyone had to (without a lot of warning) evacuate.
That’s terrifying.
I also found a bunny hiding out under a car in the parking lot when I came home from my walk. It was obviously a domestic bunny – it was black and super small and did not look at all like the gargantuan hares we have around here – and seemed very timid and unsure of what to do. Which probably means that someone dumped him. Because what else are you going to do to a poor animal during the worst heat wave western Canada has ever seen?
I hate people and I hate the heat and I hate that this is going to be our future.
This heat wave can already go die now, k?
Our condo was approximately 200 degrees this evening, so once the sun was mostly down we just went out and sat on the balcony and played Jeopardy! on the iPad.
Check out how creepy the cancer center looks.
ARCHWAY
Dudes, check out this super sharp Chinook arch we’ve got going right now.
I’m surprised I don’t have a headache from it.
Yay!
SKYPUNCH
So this is ominous looking, eh?
This sort of phenomenon is called a fallstreak hole (or cavum, hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, cloud canal, or cloud hole…and I can’t tell you which of those names is the coolest ‘cause they all are). It occurs when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water is in a supercooled state (being below freezing but not yet a solid). When the ice crystals do form, the droplets around the crystals evaporate, leaving the hole.
Apparently they’re a fairly rare thing and have been (understandably) mistaken for UFOs.
Super cool!
It’s Gonna be Brrrr Time
So just a fair warning: Calgary is headed into a deep freeze soon, so I suspect there will be a lot of book reviews on here.
I’m SO GLAD I bought that treadmill last year and I’m SO GLAD I closely followed up that purchase with the purchase of a Kindle. My daily walking is a necessity for me, but doing it inside is so freaking boring. The Kindle really, really helps with that.
Plus I finally get to read again. And reading + exercise? What more could you want?
Winter. Winter Never Changes.
Today we had to take Jazzy to the vet for her eye removal surgery. We had to be there around 8 AM.
And in true 2020 fashion, on the one day we had to leave the house, the weather did this:
That’s about nine (edit: 10.6) inches of snow in the non-drifts. But we had to get to the vet because the next open appointment for the surgery wasn’t until January 5th and her pain and light sensitivity have been getting worse by the day it seems.
So we braved the snow. Nate had to practically shovel us out of the parking lot and the roads were kind of iffy to get to the vet, but we made it. Then we got stuck in the vet parking lot. Then some guy helped push us free and we just parked on the street while I took Jazzy to the drop-off area. Then we had to make it back home. But rather than try to get back into our parking lot, Nate decided to park over at the hospital. This ended up being a good plan because he could get 24-hour parking for about $15, so we just left the car there, hiked back home (only about a half a mile, but through a lot of snow and wind), and waited for the vet to call to give us an update.
Jazzy’s surgery went very well. She did fine under the anesthesia and there were no complications. So around 4:00 PM we hiked back over to the hospital (after helping push a guy out of our parking lot, haha), drove back down to the vet, and picked up our girl.
She had a cone on to help prevent her from scratching at the stitches in her eye and she managed to get the cone off within three minutes of us leaving the vet (she wedged it on the circular indent in the top of the cat carrier and jerked her head forward to pop the clips open), so I had to watch her to make sure she didn’t start scratching on the way home.
We had to park back at the hospital because our lot wasn’t shoveled yet, so we had to carry her as gently as possible through the snow to get her home.
But once we got her home and out of the carrier, she immediately started purring and flopping…until we put the cone back on her. Then she was very disoriented and upset and started panicking every time she ran into something with the cone. Luckily they gave us some pain meds that are quite sedating, so we gave her one and she zonked out after a while. She actually seems okay about missing her eye, but she hates that cone. She’s got to wear it for two weeks, though, so that will be fun.
Edit: Nate trimmed the cone the next morning and it fits her much better. She can move around a lot more easily now and can get to her food and water. I don’t want to post a picture of her because the eye area still looks a little rough, but maybe once it starts healing I’ll give a visual update.
Poor girl.
December?
It’s December in Calgary and I just went running in shorts and a tank top.
It’s like 50 degrees out there.
What.
I’ve actually kind of enjoyed running in the 30-40 degree range; I don’t get nearly as hot (running is like the only time I produce actual body heat) and so I feel like I can run longer and easier, at least most of the time. When it’s in the 20s it’s a little rougher because my legs start off being really cold and thus feel really heavy and slow, but I can still do it.
I haven’t run in anything below 19 degrees yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.
But yeah, it is unseasonably warm here and it’s weirding me out. It legit feels like September.
It’s getting colder.
It’s inevitable.
Calgary winters are long, dark, and sometimes brutally cold. The only two things that make up for them are a) summer days that aren’t usually too hot and daylight that lasts from 5 AM to 11 PM, and b) the fact that Calgary is a very sunny city, meaning even on a lot of those butt-freezing cold days, the sun is out, which makes a big difference.
This winter is going to be especially hard because I usually make it through the winters at least in part by being able to look forward to going down to Moscow for a few weeks over Christmas break.
That’s obviously not happening this year.
And another challenge for this year (apart from, y’know, trying not to get COVID): I got super into running over the summer, as you all likely know if you’ve been reading my blogs. While I feel like I could get used to running in the cold, once there’s snow and ice on the ground, I’m not so sure. The last thing I want to do is bite it on a patch of ice and screw up my leg (or something else) and be out of commission for any period of time.
I mean, I’ve got my treadmill, of course, but I don’t think I could run 14 miles on a treadmill. It’s a slightly different set of muscles and the furthest I’ve ever gone without stopping is about 8 miles.
Plus, running outside is SO MUCH MORE FUN.
So that’s going to suck once winter really sets in and doesn’t leave until like the middle of May.
LOOK AT THIS CLOUD AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
That is one seriously looming cloud. It’s supposed to storm later; wonder where it’s going to come from?
Edit: no storm at all, haha. Just a lot of wind.
‘Berta Skies
ALOHA so I think I’d like to make either a Twitter account or an Instagram account dedicated to all the cool clouds, weather, and skies we see up here in Calgary (and Alberta in general). I have a lot of cool cloud and storm pictures and I think it’d be cool to put them all in one place.
Maybe I’ll do it! Maybe not. Who knows.
HAHAHA THANKS WEATHER I TOTALLY WANTED TO GET ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED TODAY
So Nate’s down visiting his family but I’m still in Calgary ‘cause I’m a fart but at least karma got me back in the form of the BIGGEST TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR I’VE EVER WALKED IN.*
I decided to walk up to the northeast part of Calgary (mistake #1). Basically, I go up about 7.5 miles to the UPS/FedEx buildings past Deefoot Mall and then go back the same way I go up.
Simple, right?
It was pretty hot today, also, so by the time I was about a mile away from turning around, I was happy that it was starting to get cloudy. Then I happened to look behind me and saw that it was getting REALLY cloudy. Like, dark death clouds.
Like summer storm clouds.
I keep walking, though, because I don’t want to shelter in the mall (COVID, obviously) and figure if I get rained on, it won’t be too bad.
I WAS WRONG OH MY WAS I WRONG.
I got freaking DRENCHED. It was insanely rainy and windy for a good ten minutes and there was nowhere I could take shelter – that part of Calgary looks like this…
…and the sparse buildings up there are like “LOL what are eaves?”
I remember that the FedEx building has a small overhang in front of its main entrance, so I finally make it up there and take shelter for a bit.
(Not that it matters at this point; I am SUPER wet.)
Another ten minutes or so and the storm finally passes. And it’s sunny and warm out again.
Here’s a video of the dramatic change in sky as I pan from west to east (after those clouds in the east had tried to drown me).
And here’s a cool shot of the dark sky behind a sunlit field.
Adventures on the Canadian prairies, am I right?
*This was NOT, however, the wettest I’ve ever gotten on a walk. That honor goes to a walk I did a few years ago where I spent the whole 15 miles in a very steady downpour. Absolutely soaked. I hated it.
Hail Mary!
So a huge storm system moved through here a few days ago. All we got where we live was a little bit of wind and hail, but holy hell, look what other parts of the city (mainly the northwest quadrant) had to deal with:
Holy crapples. I’m glad I didn’t get stuck walking in that.
Edit: Apparently this is now the 4th most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history, beating out the 2013 Calgary floods. Wild.
Has spring finally come to Calgary???
Maybe?????????
I was able to go running/walking without a jacket today, which was a fantastic feeling. I actually ran nine miles ‘cause it just felt so nice out and it was so much more enjoyable than the cold hell that it’s been up here all year.
Also, the skin on my arms didn’t erupt, which is good, but I remember that it took a little bit of time (and sun exposure) for that to happen last year, so we’ll see.
Maybe it won’t even happen again.
Edit: today was the warmest it’s been since September last year. That’s too freaking long for the temperatures to be lower than they were today, holy hell.
Pout…pout…LET IT ALL OUT! This is the weather we complain about, come on…
I love how every other day this week has been sunny/warm/both, but today was cloudy/windy/cold. Because Nate and I wanted to walk together.
But we walked together anyway, because it feels like we’ve only gotten like three weekends to actually do that so far this week.
And then we came home and I found a very relevant little map:
I love how Calgary’s in its own personal hell in Alberta (it’s riiiight under the title in that pink region). “You bitches are going to get a snowy April and you’re going to like it.”
Edit: goddammit, Calgary!
LOOK AT THIS GARBAGE WEATHER
LOOK AT IT.
I hate it.
At least I have my treadmill now, so I used that for the first time today instead of having to trudge through like four inches of snow.
Thank you to my wonderful husband for a) helping me haul it up the stairs to our condo and b) helping me put it together once we got it up here.
Yay.
Poof-da-woof
MY TREADMILL IS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TOMORROW LASDJFLSDJFLASFJ
In other news, it’s still the dead of winter here, temperature-wise. Today the “feels like” temperature was 5 when I started my walk.
F I V E.
It is A P R I L.
And it’s supposed to snow like five days out of the next two weeks.
I reiterate: A P R I L.
It was also cloudy and dreary as hell today, which kills my motivation to do anything. I am solar-powered, yo. I needs da sun.
Bye.
CLOUDSKY
Y’all, look at this fantastic cloud boundary. So sharp.
I risked my fingers freezing off for this, too. It’s so freaking cold here right now, but it wasn’t cold enough to deter me from taking cool cloud pictures.
‘Cause that’s how I roll.
SO FREAKING COLD
Oh my god, Calgary, fucking why?
I hate this so much. And the whole week is going to be like this. Remember last February’s month-long deep freeze? This isn’t supposed to last as long, but it’s definitely going to be colder than last February.
Gross.
FREAKING BRRR
Yeah, it’s that cold here. -30 Celsius is -22 Fahrenheit for my ‘Murican bros.
Fun fact: I have always found “Celsius” way harder to spell than “Fahrenheit.”
Eigenblogger 