Non binary nature being causes havoc with its heavy snow poop!

According to Wikipedia, mother nature is so named because it is the personification of nature that focuses on the life giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of a mother. That's probably sexist to a lot of people, although I hasten to add that no one of sound mind or body should really give a shit. Mother nature, father nature, brother or sister nature or even 'nonbinary specific nature being' - they all work.

However, for those of you that have read this bundle of letters, words, nouns and verbs since the beginning of my travels, you may remember that '  A-gender Nature being ', tried their hardest at times to show push me towards the edge of the abyss and into oblivion. In the 3 years or so I spent carrying my squidgy bits around this globe of ours, I came across earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, heat, cold, and even the odd plague of locusts. It was all a big adventure and I loved it all. But none of it ended up in a state of emergency - until now.......

Canada has snow - Winnipeg has snow. Its cold white and sticks around from November until April and is quite different from other snow in other parts of the world. Its not surprising that the Inuit people have 50 words for snow. I wish I knew which one they used last week - because the way we described it was  - Heavy,  wet, shitty, snow. 

Normally, by the time the heavy snow arrives the average temperature is well below zero and the snow that falls, while there may be a lot of it, is usually light and fluffy, easy to push around and not quick to melt. Imagine the paper you find in the shredder after putting through 50 sheets of fine tissue!
The snow that fell last week, was early.
There was a lot of it.
It fell before the leaves had all fallen from the trees.
It fell when the temperatures were still above freezing.
It was accompanied by high winds and created blizzard like conditions for about 24 hours.

This snow wasn't like shredded tissue paper - It was like cardboard, that had been left overnight in a rainstorm to soak up the water. It was heavy, wet, shitty snow and in Winnipeg itself we had 34cm of the stuff. The nature being had its fun.

What happened was unprecedented. It caused havoc and still has Manitoba under a state of emergency. The sheer weight of the snow, combined with its wet stickiness meant that around 30,000 trees in the Winnipeg area were damaged. Some with broken limbs and branches, but others fared much worse. Fully grown trees, that  couldn't bear the weight simply twisted, broke and fell. The storm was now 5 days ago and still we have trees lying prone in roadways and back lanes. Houses have been cordoned off because of dangerous trees lying across walls and roofs. Trees fell on power lines across the city and there were thousands of power outages. Portage La Prairie, a city of roughly 13000 people, lost power for the entire weekend and still has some power outages now. In some areas the electricity company are counting how many power poles are still up rather than fallen - Because the number that have fallen far outweighs the ones still standing.

We took a walk around Wolseley over the weekend and you cant walk more that 10 or 15 yards before detouring around a fallen tree or branch. The damage is incredible, even more so that it was cause by just a little bit of snow.

Manitoba still talks about the famous blizzard of 1997, when a huge amount of snow fell in April, on top of what was already a big snowfall for the winter. It caused everything to stop for a number of days. You can read a little about it here...

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/multimedia/fp-slideshow/Loooking-back-The-Blizzard-of-1997-418416243.html

But I predict, that the October storm of 2019, will be remembered in the same way. The local government agencies are already saying that the cleanup will take until spring - Winter snowfalls are coming real soon and there inst enough time to clear the debris up before then. Some outlying areas are expected to be without power for 7 to 10 days yet and communities from outside of the city have taken over the convention centre as a home, until they can go back to their own houses and communities. We were lucky - we never lost power and our neighbour Christa, spotted a branch pulling on our power lines, so I climbed a ladder and removed a couple of branches with a saw, before they could cause any damage. Good neighbours are always really nice to have and we are very luck in that respect here!

Here's a few pictures of the local area and around Manitoba that show more of the damage and a map of the power outages around Winnipeg.

Weirdly, just 2 days earlier we had temperatures of 17 degrees and Hannah, was enjoying a late summer afternoon kicking a ball about in the park by the river....

Two days later she woke up to the first snow that she was able to go out and play in and she took full advantage.....

Overall it was a pretty exciting week for everyone, except the trees!

In the next few days the sun is due to come out, the temperatures are expected to be 11, 12 or even 13 degrees and the snow will mostly melt, just leaving the branches and trees lying crippled like a tornado has passed through. Luckily, the damage can mostly be fixed, no one died and the people affected most will get back to their homes to wait for the proper snow to fall!