It’s that time of year when you might get grounded by fog if you try to fly to the Island by floatplane, or your ferry might not get off the dock due to wind..but the ferry tends to be the more reliable of the two modes of transportation.
There was a weather event int he forecast overnight but there’s not much that can be done when Mother Nature is in a mood, so I went to bed and hoped for the best.
Morning came early…at 4:30am and, though the rain had definitely been busy overnight, and was still coming down, the wind hadn’t seemed to materialize by the time I drove out at around 5:20am. The highway definitely had a lot of standing water that was, at times, a bit of a surprise in the darkness.
I connected with two colleagues on the boat and we chatted through the trip, which was relatively benign until closer to the Island. I’d say the last half hour or so was relatively bumpy.
On the drive up to Qualicum I passed through rain, sun, and back into rain. About an hour into my visit a major squall blew through and the rain pounded down while the wind howled for about a half hour. The power bumped and the generator kicked in, the system working as it should and without the brief flicker one wouldn’t be the wiser that the site was now without power from eh grid and running on a diesel backup.
And then the wind blew the clouds away.
Some time spent with some engineers stymied by a culvert drawing water that was being unexpectedly diverted through a couple of buried pipes that had obviously either cracked or had their caps blow underneath fill….and in the resulting pools with no outlet, in the middle of a construction zone….salmon fry in need of rescue before work can continue.
But because the water is murky with silt…no one has any idea how many are in the pools.
Overhead, the old E&N railway trestle bridge.
A problem for others to sort out and time to continue on my way. Stop by stop until I get where I am headed Wednesday morning.
Down the road, and the second site I stopped in at, the same squall had also kicked the site into generator mode, and work continued uninterrupted, fish none the wiser.
Backtrack down to Parksville to have dinner with two others, then back up to Courtenay for the night.
Flick on the news and discover that the wind that hit with a squall here around 11’ish gave the Lower Mainland a wild ride. At 8pm…still over 50,000 people with no power…including our place. Smack in the middle of that mess. Luckily, no new trees down on the property…..feeling grateful we had all that tree work done in the past few weeks. Power outages are no big deal. Power outages with trees laying on the roof are another thing altogether…..all four of our units have a bit of PTSD over windstorms after the past two years.
