In Ottawa, it doesn’t rain, it pours. You barely get any warning at all: one minute, the sky is grey and you feel a drop of water, the next one you are as soaked as if you had taken a shower. Similarly, thunderstorms can be quite impressive in the area: flash floods and power outages are not that rare. It’s part of our severe weather-prone country, I guess.

Just a few weeks ago, it was all ice and snow in Canada’s national capital. The weather had been mild by Canadian standards but we were still shoveling snow and wearing winter boots. We attended the Winterlude festival and we were skating (or eating beaver tails…) on the Rideau Canal.
And suddenly, it got warm. It surprised us all.

After the great freeze, we woke up to the great melt. The weather was a bit warmer and all the ice accumulated had started to melt.

Trees were literally shedding ice. Every blast of wind shook the tree limbs, coated in ice — it sounded like a wind chime. We were lucky: no power line snapped in our neighborhood.

We got a bad winter surprise today when we woke up to heavy freezing rain this morning. Yuck.

Freezing rain is pretty unique to very cold countries. When surface temperatures are below freezing, raindrops freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice accumulates to a thickness of several centimeters and it coats just about anything.

It was cold but nice yesterday night and for a second, I humored myself with the thought that Weather Canada could be wrong. Of course, it wasn’t. It never is. Weather is what Canadians predict best.

The wind was extremely strong this morning and I could barely keep my head up while waiting for the bus. Mind you, I had time to practice — it was 30 minutes late.