That Strange Blob in the Sky

We woke up like little children on Christmas morning. “What’s that yellow blob in the sky?” we asked. No, we hadn’t lost our minds or our collective memory. It’s just that we haven’t seen the sun in weeks or months, it seems. And no, we are not imagining it. Scientific rain records bear this out:

The February 6th, 2020 edition of the Vancouver Courier, (Elana Shepert) reports that Vancouver has seen its longest run of rain in more than 50 years, saying:

Last month, January only saw one dry day. And, as of 2 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 31, Vancouver had received 245 millimetres of rainfall, more than 55 per cent more than the historical average. An average January receives 158 millimetres of rain.

Rolf Campbell, the person behind the Vancouver Weather Records twitter account (@YVR_Weather), added to this, tweeting that the city has seen its longest run of rainy weather since December, 1966 and that this makes it the eleventh longest run of precipitation of all time.

All through the past few weeks, I had the lingering sense that I had seen this before, and when I read the account, it all came flashing back.

I was a young mother at the time, with two preschool children to entertain during the long, gloomy days. We had just moved from the sunny city of Calgary, Alberta with the intention of starting a new life here, in Shangri-La, as we considered Vancouver Island in those days. But as the gloom dragged on, we wondered if we had made a mistake. By the middle of February, with the rain still pounding down, we counted forty days and forty nights of wet weather, evoking the biblical experience of Noah, (Genesis 7:12) and causing us to consider our past sins.

We didn’t build an ark as it turned out, and we continued to live happily on Vancouver Island, never regretting moving here.

In this era of concern about global warming, it’s quite understandable to pin it all on climate change, as Larry Pynn suggested in his article in the Vancouver Sun (Feb. 26, 2017):

“Bigger and stronger umbrellas may be on the horizon as the region copes with more dramatic rainfall events,” he says. “Rainfall in autumn is expected to increase 11 per cent by 2050 and 20 per cent by 2080, posing a threat to pipe infrastructure and a potential risk to people. He added:

Intense rain events may increase the risk of landslides in mountain areas, along with turbidity in drinking water reservoirs. Based on current infrastructure, ‘we could expect periods of flooding, damage to property, and risks to human health,’ a report finds. In addition to making new water pipes bigger, municipalities are installing “bioswales” in the urban landscape to absorb rainwater and reduce impact on drains and creeks.

I’d be blaming it on climate change too, if it wasn’t for my memory of the winter of 1966—remembering, as I do, that we have lived through this before. So it seems, after all, that there is some benefit in growing old!