How we spent our summer: obsessed with weather
‘The Big Wet’ has been a boon for those who like to track every bit of weather minutiae
The weather tomorrow will be cloudy, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, or variably cloudy.
It could also be cloudy with scattered showers, light showers, thundershowers or a chance of showers.
It might be clear with a 40 per cent possibility of precipitation, or partly clear, or cloudy with sunny periods, sunny with rainy patches, or increasingly overcast with light, drizzling rain turning to heavy fog, and the possibility of a violent thunderstorm ... followed by flash flooding, a summer frost warning, a solar eclipse, a meteor shower and a monsoon microburst mini-tsunami that damages 10,000 trees.
Welcome to Montreal 2017, a schizophrenic summer when the daily weather forecast usually shows a picture of the sun ... hidden by a dark cloud, a lightning bolt, a fog patch and a plague of locusts.
Not to mention a burst of orange, warning of a possible Trump outburst.
Environment Canada has dubbed this summer “The Big Wet” for Eastern Canada, so I called my wonderful old pal there, senior climatologist David Phillips to find out why.
Phillips generously spent some hours crunching Montreal numbers for me and discovered that our weather has been even worse than we thought. For instance:
He says 2017 has been the second rainiest year — and the third rainiest summer — since they started keeping Montreal weather records back in 1871.
From the beginning of May to last Wednesday we had 59 days with rain and 17 additional overcast days with a “trace” of rain.
Overall, three out of four summer days were officially “wet,” with gloomy forecasts that probably made you cancel your beach plans and stay home to study your radar app.
“Hey honey! I think I see a nice, fluffy, white cloud out here between this cumulonimbus lenticular low-altitude rain front and that Stradivarius cirrus nearus microburst tornado.
“We may have 13 minutes of sun coming. Let’s go slip in one hole of golf.”
It’s not just the wet days affecting us, says Phillips, it’s the absence of dry ones. Last year we had an 11-day stretch of gorgeous sunny days and five other stretches of five sunny days each.
This year? The longest Montreal spell without rain was one four-day stretch in July ... and we called that “summer.”
Finally, the temperature’s only broke 30 degrees on three days, compared to last summer’s 18. No, you didn’t dream it; only two weekends all summer have been rain-free.
Despite the bad weather we did our best to find our inner summer. We jogged and cycled in the rain, swam in icy lakes and got soaked at the St-Laurent Street Fair, which was three parts water and one part festival.
We rushed out between storms to seize seven sunny minutes on a terrasse, clutching our own umbrella under the restaurant’s sun umbrella.
We spent more time talking about the weather than enjoying it, which makes sense. When I spent a year in Los Angeles, no one ever talked about the weather. That’s because a typical L.A. forecast sounds like this:
“Tomorrow’s forecast will be extremely sunny with exceptionally blue skies, just like yesterday and tomorrow ... And that was today’s weather!
“Now let’s go to a special halfhour edition of the Forest Fire Report.”
Instead of constantly talking weather, Los Angelenos spend that extra time doing other things, like writing TV shows, making movies and creating Hollywood.
Yet it’s not just the weather getting under our skin. It’s us. This summer has created more and more weather-obsessed fanatics. They spend their days huddled over their screens, comparing 17 different weather sites. They study the dew point, wind speed and humidex index, along with the P.O.P., the S.O.B. and the W.E.T.
They have the vocabulary of meteorologists and are often weather-chondriacs who fear stepping out of the house if there’s one cloud in the sky. Conversations with them can be dangerous.
You: “Looks like rain, eh?”
Them: “Actually, my Stormchaser radar app shows rain in 37.3 minutes, but clearing briefly after 14.3 minutes for some possible alto-cumulus calm. However, there’s a bombogenesis front forming with possible mesocylconic, wreckhouse winds showing a helicity factor of 14,000 hPa and a .000056 per cent chance of a microburst EF2 tornado.
“In fact, I’m seeing a severe gust of derecho wind approaching in 33 seconds. I think we’d better head to the basement.”
In fairness, Canada is the home of weather extremes so it’s easy to become addicted to the forecast. According to one U.S. study of 160 countries, weather takes up 229 per cent more space in Canadian media than elsewhere on the planet.
Our biggest competition comes from Australia, where people now spend far more time on internet weather sites than on porn sites. I know, I know, I’m guilty of weather porn addiction myself in this column, so I’m going to stop right now and not say another word ... until tomorrow. Have a cold and rainy week, and remember:
August showers bring September thundershowers.