Igor

I didn't blog yesterday because it felt a bit weird writing about the topic I had in mind (Monday night TV shows) while watching my home province get smacked around. The thing about people from Newfoundland and Labrador is we tend to talk big about the weather and how it is frequently awful. Which it is, but we never get truly extreme weather. We just get lots of rain, drizzle, fog and wind. It's not nice, but on the upside, we don't normally get tornadoes and earthquakes.

And we don't normally get hurricanes. I believe one went through a couple of years ago. I certainly remember the one I experienced back in 2001 because it happened only a few weeks after September 11. I remember walking around Quidi Vidi Lake after see the banks being blown by metres and thinking it was surreal; that I had never seen anything like it in my life.

Goes to show what I know. I don't know if it's a climate shift or just short term memory, but it does feel like Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are a little more on track to get these kinds of storms. That they're hanging east instead of driving into the southern US. And that they're keeping their strength for a lot longer. Normally when they hit Newfoundland they tropical storms and weakening quick. Igor was obviously something else, what with winds going over 150 km/h in some spots and a device to measure rainfall in Bonavista actually breaking around 200mm. So it's possible the community got something like 250mm of rain in less than 24 hours.

Fortunately most of my family and friends seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. Some flooding, a few uprooted trees and power loss, but that's about it. I'm still a bit worried about a couple of close friends in the Clarenville area. I know one actually got stuck in Gander and couldn't get home, even though her basement was starting to flood. Another is likely stuck on Random Island. She also certainly knew the man who died (it's a small island), so I hope she's doing all right

By the looks of this it looks like Iqaluit might get a reduced taste of what Newfoundland got. It appears Igor is coming to Iqaluit to die. Well, in the general area at least. We're not going to get a fraction of what Newfoundland got, but enough to make it less than pleasant on Thursday.

Igor sucked, no doubt about it. Although I wonder if this is just a sign to come. If these hurricanes keep tracking this way, Newfoundland is going to need to do more than just clean up after the mess; they might have to start taking into account these kinds of storms might become more common and adjust infrastructure and emergency plans accordingly. Something to think about, at any rate.

Last Five
1. Slow down Jo - Monsters of Folk
2. Junkie song - The Be Good Tanyas
3. Al you need is love - The Beatles
4. This town - Blue Rodeo
5. Streets of fire - The New Pornographers*