Wet Snow

One of the things that people who live outside of Vancouver think is that it hardly ever snows in the wintertime in Vancouver. On the whole, this is true. I remember winters where it never snowed. I also remember winters where we got two feet of snow.

This picture was taken while I was driving to work. It's the south-west corner of Queen Elizabeth Park. I'm sitting on 29th and Cambie, waiting for the light to change when I took the picture. It's about 7.45 am (and if I've gotten to this corner at this time of the day, I'm already running late!) You can't really tell, but it's snowing. And it's snowing my favourite snow: wet snow.

Wet snow is the worse because it ends up being a sloshy mess as soon as it hits the ground, but it's still cohesive enough to accumulate. And it's bloody heavy to shovel. Dry snow is much easer to shovel, and it makes for nice powdery snow. More often than not, we get wet snow.

The worse part is that it will dip just below zero tonight, so the wet snow now becomes ice. I will be driving on ice tomorrow. Hopefully they will salt. Then it will warm up to just above zero and everything will melt slightly. Then it will freeze again.

Thaw and freeze. Thaw and freeze. It's a vicious cycle. Thank goodness it's going to rain the rest of the week, and get rid of all this snow. This is typical Vancouver winter weather.

Usually by the end of January/beginning of February, it starts warming up slightly, and yes, I do see some daffodils poking up. I can't wait for this stupid weather to be over.