Weather 2011

Wow, Mark.

That looks cold. Snow's gone here, although in Belgium one never knows, it might snow again in April or so.

Beautiful pics btw. Which reminds me I still have to buy that wonderful yellow Magnolia which is covered in snow.

Very cool snow pics. (no pun intended)  So very different to here. ;D

Nice images, Mark-- I love trees in their 'white phase'
here's an image from here, not too long ago..
Unlike so many places with extreme or troublesome winters, ours has been well within the range of what we are used to and equipped for.
We've had a couple of sets of colder than average weather-- much of December, and the next two weeks are set to be cold, but nothing like the maximum lows we could have--we haven't even hit -40 (same C/F), though close a couple of times, but only for a day or so at a time..
Still, winter is far from over here, first wildflowers not expected till the end of April at the earliest..

Todd wrote:

Cohan, I expect I will have as much snow as you show, in April..with nearly 5 feet on the ground, no flowers of any type are likely to be bloming here in April, unless there is a drastic thaw.

Sitting in my brothers house in Calgary where, at the moment, there is a light dusting of snow falling.  -10 C but expected to drop to -20 C this evening and stay cold the rest of the week.  At least back home in St. John's might be tons of snow, but the temps are hovering around 0 C.  -10 C is too cold for me, let alone -20!

Since moving back here in 07, I have been watching more TV news than I ever have as an adult--the (only?) positive outcome of which is that I know more about the weather in various places--less since CBC stopped doing comprehensive national weather nightly; It might be just the luck of the last couple of years, but often I feel we are fairly lucky in my region--definitely a looong winter to endure, and sometimes the summer isn't much (in terms of exotic heat loving vegetables etc, anyway! the natives of course don't mind, and I suppose alpines wont) but we have very little traumatic weather--few storms that do damage in summer or winter, not much around that could flood, I'm not in a usual fire zone etc--and most of the cold we do get is well within norms our buildings and clothing can handle, so overall, I wont complain :)
And I did not move back from 'balmy' Toronto for the weather (apart from more winter sun here), so I determined at that time I would not complain about temperatures here...lol

Spring? in Central Alberta..
full album:  https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/April022011Spring#

Our parking area at home this afternoon, after yet more shovelling...

Philadelphus showing it can be covered in white more than once a year!

and a few shots from our drive to town today.... the back roads

the highway

and in town

Maybe this is encouraging for my future rock gardens-- I seem to have alpine climate  ;D

Thanks, Mark--I do find winter is often pretty--thank goodness, as its so long here! I am about ready for some 'live' plants outdoors, but apart from being exhausted from a long winter of shovelling snow and cutting firewood, I don't let the weather bother me too much--it won't help! And when I moved back home from Toronto, I knew I was heading for a longer winter, and determined not to worry about it...
So, if we could just get to snow that melts without shovelling, I'd be fine...lol

Nice spot, Mark! Just a little higher than me, but much more varied topography!

Weather 2011, eh?  In Utah we have a high today of (8C) 47F.  Last night I was planting up a large deep dish pot with a nearly as large tufa rock (Thanks, Tony). It was drizzling a bit.  I thought, "No big deal."  Within 15 minutes it was snowing... again. 

Northern Utah is preparing for spring flooding with sandbags and all other preventatives.  It seems rather imminent.  With a mountain snowpack that hasn't even started melting but is being added to with each storm, if it warms up quickly there's lots of flooding ahead.

Here's a link to our local television station if you are so bored that you want to check on Utah's weather.
http://www.ksl.com

We've had 15-20cm overnight and up to now, of wet, heavy snow.. still coming down.. the gravel roads should be fun...
luckily we are not in a real flood zone--no rivers close enough, and none that flood more than locally, but plenty of full roadside ditches, yards that are more puddles than land, etc.. and most snow has not melted yet (before the new stuff..)

I hear ya, cohan!  Our most recognized ski resort, Snow Bird, has so much so that they'll be open until May 29 and possibly later if it keeps snowing in the mountains every other day!  Some of the bigger storms are laying down nearly 4 feet of powder... makes me wish I still was a snowboarder.

Flower-wise, Thanksgiving Point http://www.thanksgivingpoint.com/calendar/events/tulipfestival/index.html has delayed their Tulip Festival by a week and even then there won't be a full burst of color. 

I'm just hoping for a stretch of mid-60s for a week or more.  The seeds planted last fall and early March don't seem to mind.  They're stretching out as much as they can.  :D

cohan wrote:

We've had 15-20cm overnight and up to now, of wet, heavy snow...

Same here... about 20 cm overnight, about half melted through the day.  Environment Canada prophesizes more for Monday.  Yuck, I've had enough of this!    >:(

Yes, I do understand, though I don't ski!  The snow is fine in the mountains here, and will be for some time yet!

Trond, Although I'm fairly philosophical about snow/winter ( I didn't move back to Alberta for a shorter winter!) I have always lived places with adequate snow for my needs (I have no particular need for it...) so I have never travelled to anyplace with more snow than where I am living..... and never had much desire to go into the mountains until there are plants to look at...lol

The snow we had the other day only melted on highways and areas that were shovelled or cleared, and some spots near buildings or trees.. otherwise, most of it is still on the ground (on top of what was still here...).. we luckily did not get another 2-4cm forecast for today, but there are 'periods of snow' forecast again starting tomorrow afternoon...
All I ask is that I not have to shovel any more :( but with highs forecast of -1, 1 and 0 for the next three days, I'm not optimistic.....

Stephen, if i spent the week in my garden, I'd need skis!  :rolleyes: and rubber boots....

I just had to mention I checked the Environment Canada weather for the next couple of days, and for Camrose, it's forecast for 7 deg. C tomorrow, "abnormal weather trend" they called it, I'd say so. Mind you, it was last year that we had a heavy wet snow this time of year, only lasted for a few minutes it seemed, but still! I'm farther south than Camrose, but brrrrr... I better keep that heat on in my tiny greenhouse.
Faith

Wow! Our low (for Rocky Mtn House) tomorrow is 13C for tomorrow..just a touch cooler than it has been for some days...normal high is 19C now, and we will only see that once in the next week (again, that's Rocky, we are 30km East, and could have slightly higher temps forecast farther East..

Todd wrote:

Someone send some heat my way...please!  The weather has been crazy here...in the past week we went from 4 C high to 23 C the next day, back to 5 C the next then 19 the following and now this past three days have been only 5-9 C again.  Not surprising I have  a cold!

That's nippy! Here was odd, we last had -30 in March, I think, then May was quite warm, no snow! Snow is forecast for many places in western and northern Alberta tomorrow and Sat though!

Nice view, Trond! I can imagine it does not stay quiet all day with the density of population it looks like there is..

We did not get the snow that was forecast as possible, or if we did, it was mixed with rain overnight and no sign of it... Rain possibility for 6 of the next 7 days, but June is historically the wettest month here--good for agriculture if/when farmers are able to get seeding done in May!

It's just over a couple of weeks until the shortest day and yet it's forecast to reach 15c this afternoon ,so still quite pleasant here.
What has been noticeable is that night temps have been so mild with only a couple of good frosts so far .....

In saying that there is very little in bloom ---just a few Narcissus and this this lone Gentiana acaulis .(I'll post it here as i don't think there is a thread for 'Sexy Plants') .  ;)

I just love the voluptuous, corseted shape  :-* :-* ;D

Cheers Dave.

Very nice, Dave.  Isn't it odd that Gentiana acaulis is blooming here and on the other side of the world at the same time, or is it just me??  :D

Hoy wrote:

I don't think I'll have Gentians flowering in my garden in 6 months! How is the light level at your place midwinter ???

We could do with a bit more sun in the winter Hoy.

The flip side of a sheltered woodland garden is that while frosts can be up to -9c out in the open country side, we are well below that ,(less than -4c), so Datura sanguina and Japanese Banana ,Musa basjoo, (both in pots), continue to grow at this time of the year when placed under partial cover.

On the edge of the bush other 'marginals ' such as the tall Kangaroos paw Anigozanthos flavidus clump up and flower,(yellow/green), without any attention....

Cheers Dave.

At last the dry spring has begun to break and we have had significant rain for a couple of days - nice and persistant today. I'm not sure if it will make much difference to farmers and the wheat crop but any grower must be breathing a sigh of relief.

I've never thought of gentians as being voluptuous before! Now I see them in a different light, and of course they are!! Does this make G. verna 'sylph-like'? I do hope so.

Heavy downpours night before last, causing localised flooding--especially in the small town of Eckville, 11 miles from here.. lots of water in fields, and yesterday when we were going to town, ditches were full of running water, much like spring run-off, but water was even running over the highway at once junction, something I've never seen...
https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/July122011WetWetWet

Here in London, Ontario, it has been dry as a bone since the spring ephemerals went to sleep.  Every morning during my garden tour (the last two months), more devastation met my eye.  Plants which had been pretty impervious to the weather, just shrivelled up and disappeared...and I don't like the look of my 2 ft. high Dawn Redwood just now - after all the wire used to protect it from the rabbits, now this!  Stokesia and some of the gentians look pretty bad.  However, we finally got a decent rain last night and I feel there is lots to learn from this.  Two amazing survivors are the little Ruellia humulus (wild petunia) and the red Ipomopsis rubra.  Some of the droopers have rallied - the Monkey Flower and and Lobelia syphilitica - both native here.  Of course there are water restrictions - no lawn watering - but time consuming to spot water plants in pots and the most severely stressed plants twice a day. Wish I could send pics of all this but, since I had the worm erased and my computer "fixed", Photo Shop has disappeared and I have no way of resizing them.  Maybe Mark can tell me another way to do it? BTW, Mark, it was a very good "onion" season at my place.  Fran

Frances Howey
London, Ontario, Canada
Zone 5b??

Howey wrote:

.....my computer "fixed", Photo Shop has disappeared and I have no way of resizing them.  Maybe Mark can tell me another way to do it?

Irfanview (FREE to download, and safe to download) comes with a re-sizing tool that is very easy to use. I use nothing else.

It has continued generally rainy and cool here--our share of the heatwave affecting large parts of North America was about 3 days in the mid-20sC last week (one day high 20's) always with cool nights still, and most of those days had one to several heavy downpours from thunderstorms;
Edmonton (quite a distance north, but the closest tv news/weather that we get-we don't get Calgary stations, just as far south) had 11 days without rain since the beginning of June, as of a couple of days ago, and we have had at least as many rain days, starting actually in late May.. Friday our high was something like 11C(51F) and there have been lows just above freezing--frost warning last night.. back up to 24Cish today and tomorrow, then cooler again, possibility of rain 5 out of next 7 days....
Nothing devastating here though, some areas in the province have declared agricultural disasters due to rain flooding fields, but here its just parts of many fields wet... if we don't get any dry stretches though, crops will be very slow to ripen and it will be impossible to harvest hay etc...
Wildflowers generally are loving it, with more bloom on many species, and blooming plants showing in large colonies and or scattered in places I hadn't seen them before--eg--semi/dry coniferous woods have a lot more things flowering in this wet year, and I am seeing huge numbers of Zigadenus elegans in roadsides--which is educational: I think the plants are fairly drought tolerant, based on some locations I have seen them, however, this massive wet year flowering tells me that they truly 'tolerate' drought rather than favour it...(and in fact, its been wet for at least 4 out of the last 5 years-so lots of opportunities for many plants to germinate, as well..

Thanks for the tip, David.  I have downloaded this program and look forward to working with it.
Cohan - yes, Zigadenus elegans seems to be pretty tough - not a spectacular flower but ANYTHING flowering in my garden now is doubly welcome.  Quite amazing how the lawn has suddenly gone from gold to green with this sudden rainfall - must be the corn gluten ferilizer??  Fran

Frances Howey
London, Ontario, Canada
Zone 5b

Ah, the charms of living near the mountains... getting to a trailhead in 45 minutes is great; the downside is turbulent weather!  

Here's the aftermath of a late hail-storm (they occur more usually through July) in the early evening.  It was the biggest hail we have seen in the yard in the last few years, up to about marble-size.  (We have got off lucky... there has been lots of much larger hail elsewhere in the city and environs).

What's really strange about the weather here is that it doesn't even have to be a hot day for hail clouds to develop.  It was actually very cool today, ~15 deg C... and, of course, dropped further to about 4 deg C as the ice came down!

Our yard is pretty hail-proof (all perennials, and resilient) but folks with lots of annuals (and bigger hail) might be hard-hit this late in the season.  Oh well, that's gardening here in "hail-storm alley".

Tufa garden under ice... (cleared area behind is future extension thereof):

And at about 10:30 this morning, there was still a sheet of ice on the ground - even in the sun in some places!!  Amazing, considering it was 5 deg C overnight and given the warmth of the soil.  :o
 

Update:  A local neighborhood weather station recorded a low of 2.9 deg C, +0.1 deg C with windchill... which better explains why there was still ice on the ground in the morning!  :P