From Snow to another Atmospheric River! January 10 - 25

Monday, the 10th of January, when all of the school kids finally go back to school. Woke up to the forecasted rain. Over the next three days we should see up to 100mm/4 inches of rain. Not as much as  last November with all the flooding, but with all the low snow on the mountains. it could be a problem with the temperatures rising significantly.

Cowichan Lake Marina

The puzzle is coming along, I'm sure many more hours needed.

Week One Progress

Tuesday we were out the door early heading to Nanaimo. Baby time!!! Yeah. We arrived shortly after 9am and picked up Kristi. She wanted to Costco shop as well, so off we went. Back at their house by 11:30 for lunch and then a few hours with Amelia before heading back to the lake shortly after 2:30pm The predicted rainstorm started, so we wanted to get back to the lake before the roads were too swamped with water. Amelia a little cranky today and wanted mommy mostly as she is teething. 

You are funny Grandma!

Wednesday, dark and dreary. Pouring out all night. Clouds so low they are practically touching the lake. Ray's project for the morning is to see if he could level my walking washing machine. lol It's unlevel and moves and scratches the wall on the spin cycle. In order to get to the back of the washer we (meaning Ray lol) took the door off, unscrew the shelf over the washer/dryer, and then move the dryer out to get in the "hole". What a fiasco. 

After an hour spent levelling the washer, I put a load on to test and it's still wandering all over the floor again. I ordered some anti vibration feet from Amazon to keep washers from sliding on tile floors, which will be here in 10 days ... so the disaster will stay. Ray did hook the dryer back up though so I can at least use them. I thought I'd lost him hanging over the dryer into the hole trying to attach the dryer hose. lol Certainly not the best thing for his back .... he's benched tomorrow.

Thursday the rain finally quit. The lake came up about 2 feet overnight, but by this afternoon it's already starting to go down and inch or so. I think it is still pretty cold at the top of the mountains around here, so the snow has not melted as much as they thought. 

Friday, cloudy with showers all day. Shopping run into Duncan is my "big event". lol

Saturday we woke up to fog but no rain. By 11 am the fog cleared and the sun's actually out with the lake flat calm. Yeah. At noon Ray started a fire outside and we roasted hot dogs for lunch. It sure is nice to be outside. Unfortunately, our yard doesn't get much sun at this time of year. The dock does, but it's usually too breezy. :)

Such concentration, don't burn that wiener. lol

We stayed outside until about 2 when the wind came up and fog started to move in so decided to come inside. Wow within 1/2 an hour the fog was completely back and the wind had really picked up creating waves on the lake. It stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon. Glad we had a short break.

Ray has been spending his afternoons on the puzzle and I have been working on next year's travel plans with the motorhome going to the USA. There is still so much we have not seen in the south west. Evenings have been watching shows on Netflix or Prime Video. So with all this "winter weather" we have been keeping busy.

Sunday, foggy again! It stayed pretty dreary all day until late afternoon when it changed to high marine cloud. lol Spent the day planning out next year's Motorhome trip to the USA in the fall. Yippee. The day flew by. I already reserved sites at Lost Dutchman and Catalina State Parks in AZ for next year. Turned out only one site is available at each park for the days planned. Unbelievable. If I have to cancel I will only lose the $5 booking fee and the rest of the money returned ... and yes they required payment in full.

Monday, repeat of Sunday. lol

Tuesday we were out the door at 9:30 heading to Nanaimo. Baby day! lol Jason asked us to baby sit Amelia for a couple of hours while they went to an appointment and picked up Jason's truck. She is such a happy baby. Ray briefly played on the floor with her. She can sure crawl now, with or without her brace.

Peek a Boo

Back home by 3:30. Another day of the week gone. 

Wednesday morning woke up to more fog. I ran into Duncan for some errands in the morning before the predicted rain started. Ray puttered setting up the washing machine on it's new rubber feet to stop it from travelling. Ray still needs to hook up the dryer. Good thing I did all our laundry a couple of days ago. :) Ray took a walk to the marina down the road while the sun is out and took some pictures.

Thursday, both of us up early listening to the rain pouring ... down the downspouts next to our bedroom window. lol I went out the door at 10:15 am for my hair appointment. While I was gone, Ray did some chores and then continued with his puzzle. lol Our "dock guy" Cliff, stopped by to show Ray the design for the new breakwater to protect ours and our neighbour Roy's docks which we agreed to early last fall. With delivery problems Cliff had trouble getting the decking for Roy's new swim dock he is having installed. Things should be happening soon.

Weather here at the lake can change quickly. When I left for my hair appointment it was sunny. On the way back at 1 pm I stopped at Country Grocer for a couple of things. By the time I came out 15 minutes later, the clouds moved in, the wind came up and it continued to be a stormy afternoon with waves on the lake. No rain though.

Friday, foggy start. We might have this for the next couple of days instead of the sunshine originally predicted. Shaw cable guy came today to diagnose why our internet signal is so slow at times. Turned out to be a bad connection in the basement. Someone cut and reattached the line during our renovation with incorrect parts? Surprised when we had Shaw Cable come earlier, they did not find it earlier.

Saturday, sunny day for the most part. We went for a walk but otherwise a quiet day.

Sunday morning, Kristi and Amelia arrived at 10am to spend the day and night. Amelia is sure growing fast. We enjoyed a wonderful visit. Pat brought over the quilt she had made for Amelia. She really likes it with all the different textures.

Chewing on Grandma's beads.

Monday morning Kristi was back on the road at 9am in time for Amelia's first nap on her way home. Ray completed his puzzle today after three weeks. All 3000 pieces found their place. Looks amazing.

At noon the guys arrived towing Roy's new dock next and the logs/anchors required to install our breakwater for our two properties. They only managed to set the first two of six anchors and will be back tomorrow to finish. Started out really foggy and then cleared somewhat in the afternoon before the fog moved in again at dusk.

Over it goes!

They finished the day after sinking 2 anchors and moving Roy's new dock into place.

Tuesday, another foggy morning. Myles returned to wrestle the remaining 4 concrete anchors and the rest of the breakwater into place. Halfway through his deckhand went home sick ... probably Covid. It's quite the scene to see him use both boats by himself to position the barge so he could push the concrete anchor off himself. WELL DONE!

By noon Myles finished installing the breakwater and headed back to their yard towing a boat and barge. There's quite a bit of work to do next door as they have to build the landing for the ramp to hook to and then put the ramp on the new dock. After the ramp is placed the brackets will be installed around the pilings to hold the dock in place. Roy is also getting some logs installed from the breakwater on his side, to his beach to stop all the junk coming onto our beaches. This will also help keep the people visiting the park from paddling in kayaks between our docks and shore. Myles told us we could get "gates", small logs, to hook between the two openings in the winter to virtually cut off anything floating in. Sounds like a plan. Ray at this time is constantly pushing out logs and debris to keep them from settling on our beach.

Very foggy morning.

The sun came out so Ray snapped this picture this morning. Of course with panoramic it puts a big bend on the log. lol

We also have asked for boom solar lights for the ends of the logs to prevent anyone hitting them in the dark. Last year apparently some yahoo last year launched his seadoo up onto the breakwater on the other side of the lake from us, all caught on surveillance camera.

Happy New Year December 31st, 2021 - January 09 2022

 

Everyone will be glad to give this year the boot! It's been a year of ups and downs. Last January the hopes of a vaccine putting breaks on the pandemic found out to be short lived as this damn virus kept mutating. By May it was okay to see people again and go out to restaurants if you kept to your "bubble". The summer rules were even more lenient when a good portion of the population was vaccinated and then WHAM! The third wave in September and now the fourth wave of the worst spreading variant, Omicron for December. Just in time to kill most people's travel and visiting plans for Christmas.

The biggest "Up" for us the birth of our granddaughter Amelia on January 2nd, 6 weeks early. Most of the year we spent helping out the kids as Amelia required quite a few appointments in Victoria and Kristi went back to work in July full-time.

Fortunately we have lots of things to do here at the lake to keep us occupied in between trips up to Nanaimo weekly. It sure is been nice to have a house again to "hole up in" instead of the motorhome with these temperatures this year on the island.

Here are some gorgeous snow pictures Ray took over the past few days. Absolutely beautiful.

New Year's Eve, we received our vaccine booster shot, right at 6 months since our our last shot. Yippee. I told our neighbour Pat and her husband about managing to get an appointment at a little pharmacy in Duncan yesterday so she called them and scheduled their appointments at the same time. They could not get an appointment until January 19th otherwise, so we all went in Darryl's truck together. There is a shortage of volunteers available to give out Covid vaccinations now, so quite a delay for a lot of people. I just want it done and be as protected as possible.

I cooked a New Year's Eve Dinner of Seafood Paella for Pat and Darryl as we invited them over for the festivities. 

Started out with Cranberry Margaritas. 

Ta Da

Apparently the Paella is well received. lol Both Ray and Darryl ate 3 helpings and Pat had 2. :)

After dinner and champagne, we played a rousing game of Mille Borne. We haven't played this game for years and it's new to Darryl and Pat. Ray's back for once, held out for an extra hour at the table.

We watched some of the festivities of the New Year's in Times Square and called it a night shortly after 10 pm. A great visit. Of course we celebrate New Year's on New York's time, 9 pm. Midnight is way too late for us old folks. lol

New Year's Day, Ray's arm is a little sore from his booster so we will delay one more day to put our Christmas stuff back in their boxes. My arm seems to be fine. I just puttered finding my kitchen after our big dinner last night and laundry, how exciting. We even managed to have a nap after staying up past our bedtime last night. lol

January 2 we woke up to the predicted rain. Lots coming today. Tonight the forecast is for more snow though for the next 3 days. Temps are close to 0C (32F) so we shall see how much we get. Forecast is for possibly 30cm which is 12" over 3 days. Yikes!

Ray's arm is feeling better from his shot, so we started putting our Christmas stuff away. Took 2 weeks to put up and it will probably take 3 days to put it all away. lol The house will seem empty and dark for a week or so until we get used to the lack of lights. :) Both of us started at around 9 and by 1 pm we had 1/2 done. We were done too. The rest of the day we watched the rain pour down washing away most of the snow we had.

Monday morning, still raining. Still have snow in the back yard though. Once we drank our coffee and our usual morning routine of computers etc., we were off to the races again by 8:30 taking down and putting away the rest of the Christmas decorations. By 11 am we were done other than the boxes being put away in the basement. For now they were just stacked in the hall downstairs. I vacuumed up all the Styrofoam from the packing and replaced items that were stored away upstairs to make room for Christmas.  Furniture was moved to it's proper place, i.e. the couch and chair. Wow does the house look empty in comparison. lol

Ray hit the hot tub and I moved into my chair for the afternoon watching the snow falling outside. Definitely an inside day.

Tuesday woke up to about 6 inches of snow. Looks quite wet though. The sun came out briefly and it looked beautiful. Definitely looks like winter!

I was out at 9am and started up the snowblower. An hour later I cleared the driveway and sidewalk done. The snow's too heavy for Ray to move off the dec,k so I finished a path from the door to the bottom of the stairs so we have an exit route should we need one.

By 12:30 it snowed heavily again. WeatherNet says overcast and 3C. Ha Ha! My outside temp on the heat pump says 0C and looking out the window the snow is very thick and like a blizzard. The flurries continued on and off all day, but fortunately only a skiff of snow stuck.

Amelia is now saying a few words and here she is learning to brush her teeth with her Daddy. They do this every morning and night together, he does her first and then he does his and she finishes doing hers. lol So cute.

Wednesday the predicted flurries started at 2 pm. Did a quick run to the post office at noon before it started. Our neighbour Mike, did a great job plowing our road with his quad yesterday. Now we are ready for the next dump. Unfortunately he broke the part that raises and lowers his blade so the strata will reimburse him for the part to fix it. 

Ray received a 3000 piece puzzle for Christmas titled "A Magical Mystery Tour of 100 Beatles Songs". Quite the puzzle, the finished size will be 45" x 32". Good thing we're not having any company for dinner anytime soon and Christmas is put away. It certainly took up a considerable amount of room on the table and took awhile to get it all spread out.

Thursday morning woke up to another 8" of snow ... very heavy snow. Out the door at 8am before it started to rain to clear a path off the sundeck and down the stairs. I also moved the snow away from the doors so it could melt away from the house. In the front of the house I cleared the drains in front of the garage door, and a little bit out of the front of the house. I received a message from the guy that plowed our road before with his side by side and he was going to come. I decided to have him do our driveway too.

Unfortunately, Erron messaged me at 11:30 am, he broke something to do with the 4x4 on his machine so he can't come. Damn. I should've done the driveway earlier, now it's too heavy for my little snow blower. Oh well, we're predicted to have a ton of rain over the next 24 hours so it should be reduced somewhat and there is nowhere we have to go. Mike next door did make one pass in our driveway so we would have one set of tires on the driveway if we had to go. He also did the road again in spite of his blade being stuck in the down position.

Rained significantly overnight. It knocked the snow down considerably so if we needed to drive somewhere, we could actually get out of our driveway. lol I did actually sneak out to the post office and country grocer. Roads were pretty good. 

Late in the afternoon we kept hearing banging around the house. We thought it was snow falling from the roof. Nope ... it was our neighbour Mike, he shoveled off our sidewalk between our houses to the back yard and our driveway for us. What a nice guy. Hopefully this is the end of the snow events for this year but I doubt it. Ray gave him a six-pack of beer.

With such heavy snow up island, with bus routes cancelled, a Comox bus driver called the "Flowerman", drove around town in a bus deploying "shovelers" to help clear bus stops and seniors driveways and sidewalks. What great people.

The bus even had to be "towed" at one point to help get up a hill. lol This huge snowfall definitely had neighbours helping neighbours all up and down the island. Poor Sayward, in the north island, they have to shovel 4 feet of snow. They have groups going around shoveling off peoples roofs before the snow becomes too wet and collapses structures. Only a few weeks into actual winter ... what is next?

Nice to have some "good news" stories instead of nothing about Omicron!

Saturday morning back into the freeze at -3C but by noon it was plus 3 and everything continuing to melt. Laundry day for me and Ray worked on the puzzle. The easy parts are done, now the hard parts. 

lol  It definitely took over our dining room table other than 2 spots for Ray and I to eat.

Sunday the sun was out... but the roads are very icy, especially our driveway. Darryl came over and gave Ray a hand with putting on the last "O" rings for the fire pump so it's finally put together. Certainly is a whole lot more complicated than they led Ray to believe about just putting it together! Thankfully, Darryl is a pump expert from his career in the Navy. He definitely taught Ray some stuff! Now just the wheels need to be put on the cart and he will be finished with it. Hopefully never actually have to use this piece of equipment.