So most people know just how WHACK the Vancouver weather has been lately right? You’d have to be living under a rock, in South America, with no tv or internet NOT to have heard about the recent 8 weeks of Mother Nature giving us the proverbial finger.

First we get monster rain and wind storms all through the month of November and December. Apparently it’s going down as the worst November in the history of weather reporting in BC. Now for BC, that’s BAD! I mean come on… we’re like the rain capital of Canada aren’t we? It’s not unusual to go for weeks without the sun in the middle of winter, with nothing but a soggy umbrella to keep you warm. But the sheer velocity and strength of the winds we’ve been having has been nutso to say the least.

Here’s the nitty gritty:

• The province took the top two spots in his Top 10 weather stories for the year, and also nailed position No. 9
• Early November storms in B.C. brought so much rain, "every river in the Lower Mainland, the South Coast and the southern half of Vancouver Island rose close to or above flood stage."
• A Nov. 15 storm toppled power lines, leaving an estimated 200,000 people without electricity. The rain caused landslides into reservoirs that serve Vancouver, forcing two million residents to boil their water.
• Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland residents suffered three storms in five days in mid-December, with violent winds leaving a record 250,000 without power. Winds topped 157km just of the south west tip of Vancouver Island - that’s hurricane force people!
• Vancouver suffered 27 days of rain from December into January. "Residents of the Lower Mainland came to calling it the ‘Lower Rainland’ following never-ending downpours that were wearing out umbrellas and spirits."
• In Tofino, usually one of the wettest spots in Canada, there was no significant rain from July 14 to Sept. 16, and the town declared it was running out of water.
• Up to 30 centimetres of snow hit the Lower Mainland in late November over a two day period, freezing roads, downing trees, causing major power outtages and more…

Most tragic of all this recent Mother Nature bitchiness is the mayhem wrecked on a true jewel in Vancouver, Stanley Park. Over 1000 acres of the most amazing park… thousands of trees lost in a single windstorm has deforested old growth cedars and other tree species along the north west side of the park. Areas that were once densely wooded, are now wide-open viewing vistas to North and West Vancouver. At one point the Lions Gate Causeway [the main road to historic Lions Gate Bridge that is accessed through Stanley Park] had over 3 dozen trees laying across the road.  Here are some of the latest photos: Online Photo Gallery at CBC

This used to be the West side of Stanley Park prior to our recent storm losses:

So after all this craziness, today, the weird got just a little weirder…

Another storm settled in for the weekend here in Vancouver last night, bringing wind, wet snow, wind, rain, and oh yeah, did I mention wind? and today caused the virtually unthinkable to happen… BC Place Dome collapsed. Yep… the largest air supported dome in the world, the big bubble seen in Vancouver’s skyline since Expo 86, developed a small tear that became a BIG tear, under the extreme weather conditions we have been dealing with for the last two months. The Echo Dome [as concert goer’s have called BC Place for years] is temporarily outta commission.

Here are the BEFORE and AFTER pics to prove it.
BC Place BEFORE:

AFTER: BC Place at 1:00pm this afternoon, after a panel rips on the roof…
 

As the spanish penguins from Happy Feet say, "Oh dios mio" - what is next?
Stay warm and dry peeps… it’s a wacky wacky weather season we got going on here.

OK… so picture this…

I head into work, draggin my sorry, flu-ish butt outta bed to work, only to find a police barcade on the street where my office is. Weird and cool, but mostly weird. So I drive a block farther down the road, loop around the block and drive up the back way and see cars, lined for BLOCKS down narrow River Road [which has little if any on-street parking allowed along it] right up the other end of my block. Barricaded again… now I’m thinking "what the F#@K" is going on?!? I drive up to the police officer, tell him I’m with the City and can I please got to my office for work.

"Nope," he says. "Please park in the Recycling Depot area and go to the Works Yard Dispatch area."
Umm… ok…

Drive in with my SUV and see dozens of other staff members’ cars lining the Recycling Depot and the Yard parking for the heavy-duty vehicles like bull dozers, back hoes, etc… Alright. I park my Ford beast, duck under the hood of my jacket [windy and raining in Vancouver - yes, again…] and try to get into the back of my building.

Doors are all locked. There is RCMP Police barricade tape everywhere, most outbuildings are cordoned off with the nasty yellow tape, even a barricade around a few cars. OK… so now I’m really confused and very very interested - just what the hell happened here? Did a City employee go ‘postal’? Do we have a disgruntled citizen who’s pissed about the property taxes [they aren’t a bad as Vancouver’s - yet]? So what gives…  Giving up on my own Parks building, I head into the Works Yard admin building… "Ok", I ask. "What is the scoop?"

Here is the jist of it… Apparently there was a gang fight in the park, directly across the street from the Yard and in the middle of a residential area of townhouses and condos. Multiple gun shots, multiple injured. The RCMP told our manager that there were a number of automatic handguns found IN the park itself and that an automatic weapon [of the AK44 ilk - scary!] discharged a ‘large’ number of rounds. Three people were injured and hospitalized… no one arrested, yet.

And this is the really scary part… it happened at 7:30pm last night and ’stray’ bullets put NUMEROUS holes through the building that I work in, the building beside mine, three building BEHIND mine and a few cars in the parking lot. THAT IS ONE HELL OF A LOT OF STRAY BULLETS! One of our managers’ office windows had a 1" diameter bullet hole in it and the bullet was found lodged in the solid wood wall across the room from the window [after going through 3/4" drywall and a steel wall stud. NICE. Thank goodness no one was working late last night!

We weren’t allowed into our offices at all because they didn’t know ‘how many bullets entered the building’ and couldn’t tell us how long they would be in attendance at the scene. "We’d be allowed in by noon at the very earliest", was their best estimate. We couldn’t pick up any of our work, since we could possibly ‘contaminate the scene’, so we couldn’t even work from City Hall or home. It was all very CSI with forensic ballistics people checking trajectory, impact, digging bullet fragments outta walls and such. Exciting and scary, but why the heck did I get outta my warm bed for this?!?

We were out of our offices until 12:30pm. Big waste of time? Hell yes! At least I killed off the 3 hours waiting to start working by going to the poassport office [getting me and T’s passports sorted out], I did some techie shopping at Best Buy for CHA [photobooth printer - yay!] and went home for a while to smooze with the Kodster.

I chalk today up to yet another WEIRD day in the weirdest place in Canada right now - Vancouver. Between wacky weather, strange police events and other assorted oddness… just about anything can happen in Vancouver right now. I’d even be willing to place a wager that pigs will soon sprout wings and fly, at least they’d be more likely to try in this nutty, Burmuda Triangle of strangeness called Beautiful BC… LOL!