Weather contrasts
My daughter and her three sons are looking down on me from a picture on the wall. Behind them is a bed of pansies that they found when visiting Victoria in mid-winter when we had -30 degree weather.
It’s amazing what a difference a mountain barrier can make to the weather, particularly if you have a warmish ocean current to take the bite off winter.
I wonder what would happen if we had the mountains removed? Would there be an appreciable warming of the Prairies or would coastal British Columbians have to buy long johns? With weather fronts off the Pacific meeting systems coming from the Arctic, we could see a lot of bluster at the point of confluence.
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A few years ago we ran into a different situation when we took a late winter holiday in San Diego, Calif. We encountered chilly weather from winds blowing off the Pacific. We drove over to the other side of the coastal range of mountains to the desert area at Escondido and nearly fried in the heat.
I’m surprised those enterprising Americans haven’t thought of mixing the winter coastal cool with the inland heat to get a temperate average.
I suppose the main opponents would be the Canadian snowbirds who want a hurry-up tan so they can send pool-side photos to tantalize their snowed-in relatives in the frozen north.
Spring is coming. It won’t be too long before migratory Americans will be driving our highways. Canadian snowbirds will be home using the Prairie sun to enhance their winter tans.
In the meantime we’ll do some planning for our own pansy bed.
