Canadians always talk about the weather

[the_siobhan]

Thursday was my day off and I elected not to leave the house. Good choice. We got thundersnow. A new addition to the Toronto weather-landscape, 'cause I sure as hell don't remember ever having it before. But I guess it's here now, because this is the second blizzard this winter that featured thunder and lightening. Branches and power lines were torn down all over the city. When I got up in the morning there was a freight train sitting on the tracks behind my house without an engine.

Yesterday was bright and sunny and all the massive piles of snow turned to lakes and rivers and creeks swirling down the slopes and collecting into enormous ponds in all the low areas. I walked on the snowdrifts the whole way to the bus stop so that my feet wouldn't be completely submerged. I am completely confident as to the water-proofing on the bottom of my boots, I'm less sure about what will happen if the water gets up past the laces.

Last night the temperature dropped and the water froze into black smooth sheets of lurking death or at least lurking hip dislocation. I watched a pick-up slide all the way across the road, over the median, across the other side of the road and lodge itself across the snowbanks on the other side. I did the moonwalk all the way home. The only traction was found in the areas around the old trees, where fields of splintered wood from downed branches were embedded in the ice.

Today it's warm again. And snowing. I await with anticipation the rain of brightly coloured snails that is no doubt scheduled for this afternoon.

Comments

[empressjad.livejournal.com]

We've had that weird thundersnow this winter, too! Yesterday was *really* odd...it was snowing at pretty much blizzard strength, but the sun was shining and we had a rainbow...

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that's one of my favorite weather systems ever! I've only seen a thunder snowstorm two or three times, but they're so totally awesome (in the original sense of the word).

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

I've witnessed "thundersnow" three times in Toronto: at my highschool, in the early '90s; at the height of the Blizzard of '99; and at our old apartment on Queen St., in the early '00s. (The first and third instances were lake-effect snowsqualls, so I wonder if it might be a more frequent occurence in the snow belts.) I think it's only been in the last year or two that the local weathergerbils have picked up the concept, though. I'd never heard anyone say "thundersnow" before the last couple of years, anyway.

[lilactime.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I can definitely remember several snowstorms, particularly in '99 when it snowed pretty much non-stop for a month, where thunder and lightning accompanied the snowstorm.

Those weather guys have short memories.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Guess I do too then. It's a new one on me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

Guess I do too then.

Not necessarily--it doesn't happen often, and when it does happen, it's a right-place-right-time kind of thing (because the lightning flashes tend to be much more isolated), in the same sort of way Toronto earthquakes tend to be (i.e., if you were in the right places at the right times, you could've felt a bunch of them over the last decade, but if you weren't in any of the right places at the right times, you wouldn't have felt any).

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I remember that we had thundersnow during your birthday party one year - we ate at Epicurious and the snow just kept coming down. I got sick that night with the plauge of death and had to drive home through it with a raging fever, I distinctly remember watching a car slide backwards down a hill, and also hurting my back twice digging out once I was able to leave the house.