Is there anything worse than having your garbage and recycling pick-up on the same day a major windstorm hits?
That was the case on Monday for my neighbourhood. The result was garbage cans rolling around, plastic pastry packages sailing down the street and cardboard flying everywhere.
Then you have to get out of the car and chase down your trash can and gather up the soggy cardboard. What’s more, somebody from up the street has put out some Styrofoam packaging and it’s blowing down the road and resting momentarily in front of your house. Some of the pieces have blown onto your neighbour-across-the-street’s lawn. I always feel obligated to gather it up because I can imagine them saying, “Look at his crap blowing all over my lawn!”
They’re probably not but rather than take the chance, I pull up my hood, secure it with one hand and chase blowing pieces of Styrofoam across the street and try to grab them with my free hand – all the while getting soaked from the waist down because, you know, I didn’t wear my rainpaints to work.
Oh well, life on the wet coast.
There’s always somebody who’s quick to quip, “At least you don’t have to shovel it!”
Sorry, but I think I’d prefer to shovel it rather than have it soaking into my pants.
I saw a posting from a Facebook friend apologizing in advance for his impending Seasonal Affective Disorder-tainted postings. He anticipated his winter grumpiness to be dissipated by March. Nothing kicks up the grumpiness a notch than recycling day and a southeaster.
That storm on Monday was the first major one of the season and is a harbinger of the wet winter to come. Just how wet remains to be seen but it all balances out as we learned this year.
The parched dry summer we had with record drought conditions would make you think that this past year has been the driest on record but, according to BC Hydro, that’s not the case. That’s because we got enough rain from the fall of 2014 through to September of this year (BC Hydro’s generating year) to compensate for the parched summer.
Water levels in the Campbell/Buttle reservoir dropped so low that it was in danger of not being able to clear the lip of the Strathcona Dam intake and Hydro had to build up levels in the Upper Campbell portion of the reservoir. Despite, this the utility still came out ahead of the average year by 116 per cent. So, you never can tell.