Victoria isn’t supposed to get snow, dammit. We’re supposed to watch it on our TV screens and visit it on skihills. (I say this every time we get snow…)

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…

March around here is usually rainy but not that bad… what we got included this, about three weeks ago:

Yes, actual snow, and it lasted at least long enough to mess things up and let me shoot that panorama shot… Was not impressed.

April – all two days of it so far – haven’t been impressive either, too much rain, grey clouds everywhere and cooler than usual. This is more like winter than spring still, for this area. Bleh.

Summer finally arrived in Victoria a few days ago (we appear to have skipped spring entirely…), and there’s really no finer place to be on a sunny day than out at a busy airport. If you don’t believe me, try it some time – ideally, at an airport lucky enough to have a cafe or restaurant with a nice airside patio.

Summer does have one disadvantage, though: really boring METARs like CYYJ 090300Z 18002KT 30SM FEW250 22/12 A3011 RMK CI1 SLP195 which basically says it’s warm, clear and there’s not even any wind to deal with… a pleasant change from the winter’s long, complex reports of all sorts of foul weather!

Eight AM local. Not good weather at all. No wind, but low cloud all over the place.

CYYJ 281800Z 00000KT 10SM FEW006 BKN008 OVC012 03/03 A3038 RMK SF1SC6SC2 SLP287

Ten AM local. Even lower cloud, and the visibility is coming down.

METAR CYYJ 282100Z 00000KT 3SM -RA BR FEW006 BKN011 OVC015 04/04
A3027 RERA RMK SF1SC7SC1 SLP253=

Noon local. Even worse vis, rain, mist, even lower clouds. Fun. And to think that yesterday was bleedin’ gorgeous all day… Commercial Flight Test re-scheduled for Tuesday next week. Hopefully the weather co-operates by then!