Thunderstorms 101

Winter thunderstorms do happen, but they are rare because the air is more stable. Strong updrafts cannot form because the surface temperatures during the winter are colder.  Did you know that a winter thunderstorm is called a thundersnow? That's my Severe Weather 101 learning for today.  Or is it?  What about summer thunderstorms? There is a lot to learn there. We had rain last night with lightning and a little thunder, and it has started again just now.  That signals summer for me - that's when we get our thunderstorms.  Lightning is generated in clouds with strong vertical updrafts. Thunder is the acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere.  Thunderstorms can line up in a series and become what's known as a trainband or squall line.  Where would we live in the world to experience the most thunder? Venezuela, Zulia is the world leader in thunderstorms; "The most persistent and most spectacular thunderstorm in the world is Catatumbo Lightning. This is nearly continuous thunderstorm with up to 20,000 flashes of lightning per night, seen 140 - 160 nights per year and lasting approximately 10 hours long. It produces approximately 10% of tropospheric ozone in the world." Located along the Andes Mountains, it is the largest lake in South America and is situated in such a way that mountain breezes tangle with warm lake air. treehugger.com lists the top ten hotspots ranked and listed by average lightning flashes per square kilometre per year.  It looks like the Republic of Congo is the dominant location for this weather phenomenon: 1. Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela: 232.52 2. Kabare, Democratic Republic of Congo: 205.31 3. Kampene, Democratic Republic of Congo: 176.71 4. Caceres, Colombia: 172.29 5. Sake, Democratic Republic of Congo: 143.21 6. Dagar, Pakistan: 143.11 7. El Tarra, Colombia: 138.61 8. Nguti, Cameroon: 129.58 9. Butembo, Democratic Republic of Congo: 129.50 10. Boende, Democratic Republic of Congo: 127.52 Our weather highlights say that showers and thunderstorms are skimming through southern Ontario Monday night and Tuesday.  Then we're on to a warm weekend. Our Niagara orchards on on display today.

Phenology Not Phrenology

I was at the Niagara Rhododendron Society Meeting and learned about phenology yesterday.  This is the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.  How is climate changing and what is its impact on plants? (This is not the study of the human skull size - phrenology). Dr. Robbie Hart's interest is rhododendrons in the mountains of south China - Mt. Yulong.  He tracked the temperatures and the blooming times over two years. He told us that one of the studies that has been done in relation to climate change has used historical records of various kinds.  The Japanese have recorded Sakura blooming times over centuries - as part of novels, historical records, personal diaries, and more.  Robbie showed a chart of the increase in temperature from around 700 to present day. You can see the article and chart HERE. It was published in the International Journal of Climatology, in 2008. Japan is obsessed with cherry blossoms - and wonderfully so.  There are so many everywhere that  there is a cherry blossom forecast by region for 2018.  Blooming starts as early as March 21st in some areas.  A tour of the parks is shown in this article HERE  Our images today come from Hagley Museum - the Dupont's original powder works.  It is in Delaware close-by to Longwood Gardens.

Tracking Santa

Did you follow Santa on his journey around the world? NORAD tracks Santa on Christmas Eve. Tracking began by accident in 1955.   Before NORAD was formed, when it was still the Continental Air Defence Command (Conad), a newspaper misprinted a Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement containing the phone number for children to call in to talk to Santa. Instead of reaching Santa, children reached Conad operations in Colorado.  "A colonel by the name of Harry Shoup picked up the phone and assured children who called in that Santa was safe and CONAD, at the time, would be tracking Santa on his progress through North America," she said. The tradition continues and NORAD trackers are finished for this year - he was spotted over the great wall of China, over Christmas Island, Vietnam, India, Afghanistan, Moscow, London, South America, and then Canada and finished in the U.S. There are many articles identifying Santa's workload, speed, and route.  The Atlantic narrows it to "Christian kids" - 526,000,000 of them under the age of 14 in the world.  So he delivers presents to 22 million an hour. That's about 365,000 kids a minute, about 6,100 a second. The dailymail.co.uk also has an article on the science of Santa -  Mr. Claus will eat 150 billion calories in milk and mince pies.  He will need to walk 1.3 billion miles, which is 54,000 times around the circumference of the earth, to work off the extra weight.  More at dailymail.co.uk Enjoy Christmas Day!

Christmas Weaths

The wreath has been a sign of honour or victory from Greek times.  Bay Laurel Leaves date from Greek mythology.  Other leaves that made wreaths included oak leaves - symbolizing wisdom, and were associated with Zeus.  We also think of wreaths as arrangements for funerals.   The Etruscan's made wreaths - they were stamped in thin metal and attached to an ornamental band.  They included ivy, oak, olive, myrtle, laurel, wheat and vines. In Christianity, the Christmas wreath was used to symbolize Christ. The circular shape, with no beginning or end, represents eternity or life never ending. The evergreen, most frequently used in making Christmas wreaths, symbolizes growth and everlasting life.  The wreaths were typically decorated with four candles, three on the exterior and one in the middle. The middle candle was lit on Christmas Eve to symbolize the arrival of the Light of the World - Jesus Christ. A tradition began in the early 19th century to lay evergreens shaped into wreaths or crosses on graves to honour the dead. Family members would bring them home to use as part of their Christmas decorations during the holiday season. So there is our wreath tradition.  Our first snow fall was yesterday, and I took pictures of the orchards across from the United Mennonite Home and on John Street.   This summer the Cherry Lane orchards got signs with their orchard names. I've included a picture from the spring - what a contrast with those soft colours in the last image.

Almost Here

pring begins tomorrow at 6:29am.   Our weather yesterday was a fluffy snow fall, and with the ground soft, one could smell all the moisture.  That made it quite cold, too.  How does Accuweather.com predict daily weather into the beginning of May?  It gives the sense of a predictable weather pattern, although we experience otherwise. When I look out my office corner window, (not my corner office window) I can see the Niagara escarpment.  It is one of thirteen UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves in Canada.  The trail along it starts in Queenston. The cairn marking the trail's terminus is in a parking lot, about 160 metres (520 ft) from General Brock's Monument on the easterly side of the monument's park grounds. The trail concludes in Tobermory.  It is 850 kms long, with 400 km of side trails. The idea to create it came about in 1959, and the trail was set in motion in 1960, with regional clubs established along the length of the Trail.  Each club was responsible for obtaining landowner approvals, organizing trail construction, and maintenance efforts within their region of the trail.  The cairn at the northern terminus of the Bruce trail in Tobermory was unveiled in 1967 - Canada's Centennial Year.  It is the oldest and longest marked hiking trail in Canada. When Dezi and I go to Grimsby Beach, we walk one of the spur trails - a side trail from the escarpment to the Lake. We in Canada have the distinction of having the longest hiking trail in the world - the Trans Canada Trail.  It is 24,000 km. It is an astonishing length - the next longest trail in Italy is 5,954 kms long.  Today we say farewell to winter in pictures from yesterday's snowfall.

Googling Up the Mountains

I noticed a parking lot at the bottom of Twenty-First Street - it is the curvy country road beside Twenty Mile Creek that comes up behind Cave Springs Winery.  Dezi and I went for a walk, and the winding path went along a little beaver pond, and went up into Jordan.  Cave Springs is the square building on the right.  This made me wonder whether Google has videoed any walking paths that aren't accessible to vehicles.  We could google up a mountain and visit places via the magic of Google.  I haven't found anything, but along my journey found this article from 2010: Nicaragua Mistakenly Invades Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps "Why did Nicaraguan troops mistakenly invade Costa Rica last week? Was it really because of a Google Maps error? Wired's Danger Room explains: Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the border, took down a Costa Rican flag and defiantly raised their own flag on Costa Rican turf. But the troops’ commander, Eden Pastora, told a Costa Rican newspaper, Google Maps mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Government officials in Nicaragua have also blamed a “bug in Google” for the error. Now, the Organization of American States and UN Security Council are being called in to mediate the dispute, and find a solution to the problem caused by Google. “Costa Rica is seeing its dignity smeared and there is a sense of great national urgency,” said Costa Rica’s excellently-named President Laura Chinchilla. Google has since apologized for the error (which can be traced back to bad information from the State Department) and is working to correct its erroneous borders. Most embarrassing, notes Wired, is that Google's competitor, Microsoft, uses correctly drawn maps. [UPDATE]: As commenter Nippon Tico points out, the troops crossed the border and raised the Nicaraguan flag well before learning of Google's mapping error; the Google excuse was made after the fact. What's more, the Bing map is also a bit suspect."

Winter Flowers

St. Catharines participated in the Women's March on Washington yesterday. The question I searched on today was: how big was this march?  There were estimates of 2 million world-wide. It turns out that the question itself has an interesting story. The estimating of numbers turns out to be contentious: "The National Park Service stopped giving official estimates ever since a dispute about how many attended a Million Man March in 1995. The Park Service was threatened with a lawsuit when they estimated 400,000 showed up to the Million Man March, while organizers believed that one million were there. After that, they stopped publicly releasing estimates. Now, estimates are given by law enforcement officials or federal officials, or organizers." Our weather dominated yesterday. We don't get fog that often so I spent some time driving around and took a few pictures.  It looks like today provides the opportunity as well. I found a picture of a tower in San Francisco where there is a 3-dimensional fog shadow.  "The thin fog was just dense enough to be illuminated by the light that passed through the gaps in a structure or in a tree. As a result, the path of an object shadow through the "fog" appears darkened. In a sense, these shadow lanes are similar to crepuscular rays, which are caused by cloud shadows, but here, they're caused by an object shadows.(The description was provided by Dr. Andy Young.)" Our fog images were taken at Prudhomme's Landing yesterday.  The first looks towards the Lake - the fog obscures everything, giving a bleak sensibility. The second picture looks towards the west. The QEW is on the left and the hotel complex would have been on the right of the picture.  Again, the lights rising above a barren landscape speak of destruction and desolation.  The floral picture is our Winter flower, kale, found yesterday in downtown St. Catharines and elevated to the starry night.

Guelph Arboretum

Yesterday's snowstorm over the lake didn't land in Grimsby.  It did land in Guelph.  I was there yesterday for Baxter's dental experience - he broke the canine tooth that had been repaired in 2014 at the same clinic.  This time it had to be removed. Guelph is a centre of veterinary specialists associated with the University veterinary programs. My interest was the Arboretum and the range of yesterday's landscapes was remarkable in the snow.  New-fallen snow outlined the trees and defined the curves of the landscape.  There was perfect light - the sun was shining through a misty haze in the sky - just the faintest of shadows.  Guelph is home to the University of Guelph.  It has an exceptional program in veterinary medicine which is ranked fourth in the world. I drove through that section of the campus - with barns, horse crossings, and horses outside in the paddock. I stopped at the beat-up recycle bins for some abstracts.  One bin was for manure.   Guelph has large agricultural, horticultural and environmental programs. The pretty Victorian conservatory is the icon that testifies to the beginnings of the programs in the late 1800's. The Arboretum, started in 1971,  is surprisingly large.  With the amount of snow -  two feet - it kept filling my boots when I walked through it.  So I toured it mostly in the car.  You can tour it on youtube here and see how remarkable it is.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was

Our title today is a song title by Rogers and Hart. On Saturday I stopped at Moyer Road in Vineland to photograph the solitary oak tree.  I've taken this tree's portrait for a while now and there are two pictures of it - one of these pictures is from December and one from Saturday.  They seem indistinguishable to me.  It will be interesting to see how spring unfolds on the landscape and shows its presence.

The Colours of Water

"That cool, refreshing glass of water on a hot day may appear colorless, but water is actually a faint blue color. The blue color becomes visible when we look down into, or through, a large volume of water. We see water in a variety of ways. It may be colored by particles, the presence of bacteria, or by reflecting the world above its surface. Ice and snow may reveal a vivid internal blue. Water itself has an intrinsic blue color that is a result of its molecular structure and its behavior." We've got pictures of three bodies of water in Grimsby today.  The first is the Forty Creek, and we can see the muddy colour from sediment.  The second is recognizable as Grimsby Beach on the Lake with that blue tone. As these pictures were taken on the same day and within a half hour of each other, one can see how much the sky plays a part in creating the colour of water. And then we have the creek next to the Cemetery - it seems to be  black. Wikipedia says: "A few tens of meters of water will absorb all light, so without scattering, all bodies of water would appear black."   View this email in your browser

Frosty Red Maples

There was a lot of frost early yesterday morning so I was able to get some Japanese Maple leaves in the grass.  They look like they are coated with sugar and could decorate a cake. Today is roast turkey, candied yams, giant balloons and American football.

Escape the Cold of February

Escape the Cold

Canadian Winter Escape Thank you for the Birthday Wishes for Gerry!  We go to Florida on the weekend and will escape the Canadian winter cold for two weeks. How many Canadians take a winter trip to the sun?  I saw an article that said 45% expected to take a winter vacation in the sun (the article was in 2000).  That seemed high, so 'expecting'  might be based on the desire, rather than what people do. I take mini-breaks in the winter by going into the conservatories in the GTA and surrounding area.  I can go to the Niagara Falls Floral Showcase, the Royal Botanical Gardens Mediterranean Greenhouse, Toronto's west-end Centennial Greenhouse, and Allan Gardens in downtown Toronto.  And for pure delight, consider the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory. You'll see scenes like these - little versions of Florida botanical gardens. You'll get the benefit of the smells of the tropics too. It is such a contrast with our austere winter landscape and lack of scents in the cold air. So consider a trip to a conservatory - there are two tropical beauties in these pictures - the first is Dutch Man's Pipe - a climbing vine that has these big brim flower at the front and a 'pipe' shape at the back.  And the next flower is an orchid cactus like the Night-blooming Cereus - high white flowers with a lush tropical scent.

The Winter Garden I wonder what percentage of Canadians have a snow winter?  I guess it is over 95%.  The Winter Garden as portrayed in garden landscape books doesn't look like this.  There are hellebores, cyclamen, the pretty stems of yellow and red dogwood, and various winter-blooming plants.  Heather blooms in abundance in February on the west coast.  Not here - the ground is hard and unforgiving.  There is a  simplicity in the winter landscape.  Trees become the major feature with their trunks and branches.  Our snow-filled winter means a significant contrast between the winter and summer garden.  You can see it with the last photo.