Monday, March 28, 2016

Wild Easter Weather!

I can't remember a wilder series of changes in the weather over 5 days - ever!  On Thursday we didn't get the big snowstorm that was forecast, but we did get a little, and then the freezing rain, giving us a genuine ice storm.  Then Easter Weekend arrived, and we had two beautiful sunny days, and all the ice and snow melted away; the temperature hit 17°C here!  Then we had heavy rainfall overnight - very heavy rainfall, for 12 hours, and now we're back to snow!  What a rollercoaster over 5 days!

First, I should report the faithful ressurection of the Pasque Flowers, covered in ice and snow 24 hours before (see the contrast at the end of Friday's post).  A fitting symbol of Easter Sunday here, which we spent with visiting family, including our wonderful grandchildren.

It all started with the ice storm on Thursday, when the ice just kept accumulating.  We suffered no serious damage here, but friends nearby were without power for two and a half days!

The evergreens suffered the worst, accumulating ice on every needle.

But these tiny Silver Maple buds, already bursting into flower, got pretty well covered!

Then on Saturday morning the sun came out.  I failed to get a picture of the sunny skies, too busy with family, but for a short while all the ice on the trees was magically sparkling in the sun.

The sparkle didn't last long, and the entire evidence of the ice storm melted away, but it was pretty while it lasted..

After a beautiful warm sunny Sunday, we woke today to a saturated landscape after nearly 12 hours of heavy rain overnight.  I couldn't get a picture showing the rain itself, but about 10 a.m. it suddenly changed to snow.  Here the snowflakes begin!

Sorry this is so blurry; did a poor job on this one.  But I have never seen such a large intense rainstorm approaching us from the west, and most of it is already past and moving east toward Quebec!  We're just beyond the northeast end of the yellow on this radar image, and it looked like it was all moving toward us!  Luckily, at this point it changed to snow.

I couldn't get a picture of the rain falling, but I did notice that there was some water pooling at the far edge of the yard.  I walked outside, looked around the shed, and there it was - all the rain, forming a flood in the low part of our yard.

In fact, it had formed a good sized lake - never in all the years we've been here have we had any flooded pool of water like this, and this was from just one overnight storm.   It'll be a long time til I'm mowing the path that crosses the picture straight toward us!

We do have a drainage challenge here, as our house was built with a depression outside the back door, in order to give us walk-out basement doors.  So we had an underground drain installed from here out to the low point in the yard.  When they put in the new patio, they extended the drain all around the semi-circular edge.  I feared that it wouldn't be enough to take away all the water from this storm!

But it worked fine.  This is the ditch where the drain exits (right at my feet).  This saves the water from flooding our basement; it harmlessly floods a corner ot the yard instead.

And in this storm it flooded beyond the ditch to cover quite a large corner of our yard, as well as part of the neighbour's.   We'll probably never see it this high again.

And to top off the wild weather rollercoaster, the snow continued for several hours.  The landscape is white again.  Except for the extremes this year, actually pretty typical late March weather here.  March is definitely going out like a lion!

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18 comments:

  1. Wow! Now that is an amazing weather adventure, all right. I love all your pictures, showing how different the weather was from one day to the next@ :-)

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  2. We had similar conditions, but more snow than freezing rain, two sunny days, and rain today.

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  3. You have really had some extremes! We have too. Not like you have had, but we have had blizzards and snow and ice and cold and in between them all we would have sunny skies and warm weather. This was all in a week's time.

    Ice can paint some beautiful pictures, but it is so destructive. And then, there is all that water! We also had a lot of water running off in the yard from all the snow we had on Saturday.

    I'm glad you had a good time with family and grandchildren.

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  4. It's a good thing you had a couple of sunny days in between your very nasty weather.

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  5. Beautiful photos. There was something good from this weather!

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  6. You surely must be ready for Spring. Great photos. Carol

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  7. Nice photos! We seem to be in spring now, but it's always subject to change.

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  8. Interesting weather you have there! Great photos!

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  9. WOW ! you did get all kinds of wild weather there and now you have snow again ? YIKES ! hope spring shows up there soon it has been a battle between winter and spring for you guys and winter seems to keep winning there . Lovely photos . Spring here is getting stronger and keeping old man winter out for us thank goodness . It is amazing how different the weather can be from there to here and your only about 3 hours north of us . Thanks for sharing , Have a good day !

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  10. Hello, pretty snowy icy scenes. The weather is crazy! Happy Tuesday, enjoy your day!

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  11. That sure is crazy weather! I'm thinking that once the water drains away and the weather turns warmer, you'll have some lush looking grass in that section of your yard! The ice looks so pretty on the trees, but oh what a mess ice storms can be! I'm glad it's melted away!

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  12. This time of year the weather is so unpredictable! Hope it settles down for you a bit now.

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  13. Oh my, it seems that Old Man Winter never wants to go away for good.

    Worth a Thousand Words

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  14. That is a crazy mix of weather you had! And somewhat like ours too. The rain didn't amount to as much as predicted though...at least not in our area. Good thing to put in the drainage away from your basement and that it works.

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  15. We got pretty much the same deal ... except for that final snowfall (and quite frankly, you can have it!). You have some great shots of the ice storm in this and your other post. I find the ice formations a great subject for photography. I start to worry when we have heavy rainfalls. We've had a leaking basement in the past, and I'm not convinced the water is draining away from our house as well as it could. You have a nice puddle there, but hopefully you're getting the same sunny day as us today and it'll dry up soon enough.
    Wendy

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  16. Good thing you have that drain! The flowers made a remarkable recovery very fitting for Easter morning:)

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  17. That's a big change in weather! We had a LOT of rain over Easter but the temperature didn't change much at all. We are still having very humid days around 30+ degrees celcius. I'd love some cooler less humid weather.

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  18. I love the flowers. The icy branches look amazing, but it must be hard on the trees.

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