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Storm Watch!

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It’s hot here today! 31 Celsius (87.8 F) with a humidity factor bringing the temperature up to 40 Celsius (104 F). See I told you it gets hot and humid here in Toronto.

It’s been dark and kind of overcast for the last couple of hours, but just a few minutes ago it got almost as dark as late evening and the wind picked up like crazy.

A storm’s a comin!

Now there’s thunder and lightening but very little rain. So far.

This is the kind of weather that causes Tornado’s to spring up in the Southern Ontario region. I hope that one doesn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a few towns that got hit by one.

Chances are also high that our power will go out at some point in the near future. A couple of years ago when there was a good storm like this one’s shaping up to be my husband and I heard a loud crack and saw a giant flash of light off to the east. Turns out it was a transformer that got hit by lightening and blew up! That kept the electricity out for a while!

Wish me luck?

I’m sure my plants will love the extra water and nitrogen in the air from the lightening … but I really hate thunder storms.






Elderly neighbor already tending her garden?

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I’ve mentioned my “stalker” neighbor Sofie before haven’t I? She’s the little old lady that lives next door who stares at me from her living room window when I sit working on my desktop computer, or who rushes outside the moment I try to get any work done in the garden. Are you remembering her now?

Don’t get me wrong. She’s a nice enough lady, but she’s very lonely, and clingy and well, uhm this kind of creeps me out sometimes.

In an earlier post I had said that our weathers been warmer this week and that most of the snow that we got a week and a half ago or so is almost gone. Well this seems to have spurred the gardener in little Sophie because I saw her outside earlier poking through the earth in her garden. It’s 0 Celsius outside … too cold to be outside without a coat on!

I wouldn’t doubt that she’ll be out turning her soil daily soon. It’s not like she has anything growing in her garden, or that there’s really any tending that needs to be done on this day in the middle of March. It’s just soil. When she gardens she grows vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, leeks, mint and that’s pretty much it.

It’s not like weeds are likely to start growing this week. We are set for cooler weather again and maybe even some snow. It will be below zero most nights and perhaps a few of the days in the next week.

Looks like I’ll have to try to persuader her to stop puttering outside in the freezing cold.

Thunder and snow

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Early Thursday afternoon I was sitting at my computer working on a post for one of my blogs and I noticed that the snow storm that had been supposed to start Wednesday night had finally started.

The snow was coming down like it was making up for lost time. There was easily half a foot or more within 30 minutes.

It was still below freezing at the time – -1 Celsius (which is just below 32 F), but we’d been expecting freezing rain so I knew that it might warm up a little. Conditions outside would be pretty hazardous if we got freezing rain.

Then, at about 1:30 pm guess what I heard? Thunder? Yeah, it thundered on and off for about ten minutes. I didn’t see any lightning but there might have been some somewhere.

I had heard that we’d had thunder and lightning a few days ago too, but I’d missed that.

Considering that I live in the great white north it’s pretty strange to experience thunder in the winter time. Especially if there’s snow on the ground or even more surprisingly if it happens to be snowing when the thunder is heard.

That was strange enough, but worse was yet to happen.

I think it was around 5:30 pm when I realized that my internet connection was down. I’d just sent an email and as far as I know it got sent off ok, but all of a sudden I couldn’t reach websites I’d been trying to get to and my email program was just spinning and not collecting mail.

So I thought to myself … ok, it’ll probably be down for just a little while. I’ll turn on the TV and select whatever I’m going to record on the DVR.

Oh oh … Can’t do that either. The cable box came on, and so did the TV, but the television just has a blank screen. Well .. a black screen. That worried me because I thought maybe our DLP TV had failed again … but when I tried to change the channels I could see the channel info box come up on the TV so I knew it was working. It was just the cable that wasn’t.

I called the cable company and yes, the connections were down in my area. When I was speaking to them they were just sending a truck out to fix the problem so they didn’t know if it was weather related, a simple problem or if perhaps a car had crashed into their equipment. The latter would result in quite a delay in repairs. I was told it usually takes about four hours when they have to fix connections for an area, but depending upon whatever caused the problem I might not have had a connection for a long time.

I filled my time writing up a few posts in Notepad and reading a book. I’m so used to sitting at the computer and working on my sites during the day and often early evening that it felt really strange to not be able to do that.

I got my internet and cable TV connections sometime late in the evening. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that both services don’t go out at the same time again!

Now if you’ve come here for PHOTO HUNTERS perhaps I’ll take a photo of the melting snow on the slushy streets later today. I think during heavy snow and ice storms they still do use some salt in the mix of what they put on your streets to melt the snow .. and that’s the only way I’m going to be able to get anything for the Salty theme on this blog today. LOL

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