First Winter Storm

Victoria Airport weather as of about forty minutes ago:

METAR CYYJ 190200Z 15028G36KT 3SM -RA BR FEW008 FEW016 OVC030 07/05
A2969 RMK SF1SC2SC6 SLP055

See that “15028G36KT”? That’s wind, lots of it. 28 knots is 50km/h, sustained wind speed, with gusts up to 38 knots, 70km/h!

Victoria Harbour – right down in the city proper, about 25km south of the airport – isn’t quite as bad, but still lots of wind:

METAR CYWH 190200Z 15018G28KT 12SM -SHRA FEW010 SCT025 OVC050 08/01
A2969 RMK CF1CU2SC5 SLP055=

18G28 – the harbour’s gust speed only just matchs the sustained wind speed for the airport!

We’ve had a constant stream of weather warnings for the last 24hrs, but it took until this afternoon for the wind to really start hammering us.

Nobody makes a proper METAR-widget for WordPress. Lots of weather plugins, but there don’t seem to be any to show proper raw METARs. Perhaps when I get my PHP skillz back up to speed I’ll attempt one, using the US NOAA/FAA API.

And the otherwise-awesome Gnome panel weather applet has had its location listings gutted recently, so I can’t get both the local airport and local harbour on my panels like I used to… hopefully this regression gets fixed for Ubuntu 10.04!

Now, though, I think I’m going to make something warm and alcoholic to drink, check my flashlights, and hope the power stays on…