So, it actually rained through a good portion of last night.  The snow started up again this morning, and it’s still going.

We got Aidan out in it around 11am.  Just a few cm down, but enough to make things interesting.  Unfortunately, owing to the rain through the night, and the 300-some mm of rain we’ve already had this month, the snow is very slushy.  And the ground beneath is very muddy and waterlogged.  We went down to Charleston Park and let him play a little bit in it all.  And right now, Gwen’s jacket, his snow suit, and the outfit he had on underneath are all in the washing machine.  I hope the mud comes out.

Not optimal photo-taking weather either.  Here’s a sample:

So, tonight it started snowing. It’s supposed to snow all night and all through tomorrow too, likely making this the largest snowfall Vancouver’s seen in 5 or 6 years. 20-30 cm expected.

So, this makes it Aidan’s first snowfall! We’ve taken him into the mountains last winter, so he at least has seen snow before, but not falling from the sky.

Coincidentally, Gwen bought him a snow suit last night. I say coincidentally because this snow wasn’t forecast last night. Anyway, we bundled him up and went out into the night for him to experience this strange phenomenon.

He watched the snow falling from the doorway initially, just staring at it. Once we got going and out walking, he seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, chatting on the whole walk down to Choklit Park, and back.

I took some video too, but it didn’t turn out. That explains the small number of photos too. Oh well. Hopefully we can get some video and better pictures tomorrow.

Rain and wind: still ongoing.

Santa Claus parade: extremely damp and chill-inducing. We didn’t go.

Boil water advisory: still in place.

Ah, winter in Vancouver.

Wow, it’s been wet. Vancouver has had, apparently, 237 mm of rain this month. The record rainfall for the month is 351 mm, set in 1983. Note, however, that we still have half a month to go.

So, that’s a lot of rain. And it’s been coming in very un-typical winter storms. It’s not unheard of, but usually the rain comes down in a constant, but reasonably light, drizzle. Not this month. This month, we’ve been having what would be typical Atlantic winter storms. The one yesterday packed quite a punch, stopping the ferries, knocking out power to over 150,000 Lower Mainland residents (in fact, that’s the number that didn’t have power this morning, some 18 hours after the worst of the storm had passed), flooding various areas, knocking down a steel-framed building under construction, and just generally causing a nuisance.

That much rain in a short period of time has kicked up quite the mess on the local mountains too. The three reservoirs (Capilano, Cypress, and Seymour) are over-full and all riled up. So much so that the water supply has high turbidity. Now, in my civil engineering courses, they taught us all about turbidity. Unsurprisingly, I remember very little about it — the “water” speciality never held any of my interest. My friend Audrey, who now is Operations Manger for the City (?) of Sydney, Nova Scotia (now, apparently the Cape Breton Regional Municipality), knows all about it and I’m sure could tell you more than you ever wanted to know. From me, all you’ll get is a link to Wikipedia: turbidity.

So why am I telling you this? Because, in this day and age, this modern world in which we live (sorry, Paul, it’s not in this world in which we live in), in this modern city, we should *not* be under a boil water advisory. That’s right. The GVRD is *suggesting* (it’s not an order yet) that we boil our water before consuming. That we don’t bathe our children, only showers. Tooth brushing in boiled water only. Washing of fruit and vegetables with boiled water only. Fun stuff! It turns out that the turbidity of our water is currently in the 80s (NTU) , when it is usually around 1 NTU. And, you can tell. Or, at least, it’s become quite obvious over the past few hours. The water in the toilet has gone from crystal-clean to incredibly cloudy. Oddly, it’s not as “dirty” as I would expect — it’s not brownish — but still, it’s pretty obviously abnormal.

Hopefully this only lasts a short while. However, we have another major storm expected on Sunday, so it could be a rough month!