Snow reports

Goodness gracious me, at the conclusion of the dramatic Copenhagen talks which turned into a global giveaway of Western taxpayers money cometh the snow. Even the south of France came in for an icy dollop, and it doesn't happen there often, although the incidence does, anecdotally at least, appear to be increasing. Maybe the weather has cottoned on to how certain humans want to control the climate by taxation and decided to put its vote in the box.

Here on the Island we've had one brief bout of snowiness, and the all weather tyres on our venerable battlebus coped admirably. We've got a couple of putative snowfalls due next week, and might even get a (slightly) white Christmas. These are not common on Vancouver Island, although last year we had a foot or so on the run up to the festive season as shown in the pictures from last year. Snow ploughs didn't get to us until the 28th December 2008 at 2:30 in the morning. This end of 2009 I haven't had to trot our 4x4 out for foul weather purposes at all.

Dog loves snow (and mud, and bear scat)


There's a layer of six inches of compacted ice and snow on the only road out towards town in this picture from 17th December 2008. At times we were driving at an angle of fifteen degrees to the direction of travel. Tricky stuff. Even 4x4's were coming to grief in the ditches as seen below.


When we first came to the Island, our local friends assured us "Snow? Heavens no. You'll have to go to Mount Washington for that." Okay. "It doesn't snow here on the West Coast." They said. Right.