SNAP THAT

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Rain Damage

A map of Northern British Columbia. The areas affected by flooding are in the Peace River Distrcit (NE BC)

I'm not sure who took this aerial photo but it was one of the first ones I came across on line. It showed me just how devastating the flood is.

Here is some drone footage of the flooding. It also gives a good overview.

Photo credit: Chet News, M Gomez

The Canadian National Railway (CNR) service between Prince George in north central BC and Ft. St. John in the north, is not running. If you look at the tracks going over the water in photo above you will see how precarious some of the railway tracks now are.

The Highway 97 south of the town of Chetwynd to MacKenzie is closed. Here is some film footage of the highway taken just before it was shut down.

Altogether the people in the far north are "hemmed in" and a state of emergency has been called. Hospitals in some towns are accepting emergency patients only. Mother nature has spoken yet again. Apparently the City of Dawson Creek had a record rainfall on Monday, June 15, 2016 of 89.8 millimeters.

Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA) is now available to eligible British Columbians in the Peace River Regional District area, including Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Fort St John, Hudson’s Hope, Pouce Coupe, Taylor, Tumbler Ridge and the First Nations communities of Saulteaux and West Moberly who may have been impacted from the major flooding that occurred this past week. A public meeting will be held on Monday, June 20 at 7:00PM at the Encana Events Centre to help people access the DFA.

I encourage my reader to view the drone footage. Even under water you can see how beautiful the area is at this time of year. I grew up in this area of the province and so I am concerned about the people there. As a child I walked through this park area many times to reach school. It is so hard to believe it caused a flood because the water levels were always quite low and the creek was often more like a trickle. That's the difference a heavy rainfall can make.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Sky Watching

I spoke too soon at my last post here about not getting heavy rainfall on Monday. That night we had such a torrent of rain that there was significant flooding in one part of the city. We don't usually get floods here despite the fact we get a lot of rain.

I also saw on the news tonight that there has been significant rain and damage in a small northern city called Dawson Creek. Not Dawson City in the Yukon, but Dawson Creek which is located at Mile "0" of the Alaska Highway. Dawson Creek is in the beautiful Peace River District in northeastern British Columbia.

My small garden is okay even with all the extra rainfall.

Here are a few photos.

The cherry tomatoes are starting to grow.

The snap peas are also growing.

The rodents are still eating my kale. I've planted a few more but have been too tired to try and cover them with netting. My starter seeds of lettuce did not germinate well and whatever did was picked and eaten by the crows. The crows also ate all the sunflower seeds I was trying to start so instead I've planted some seeds directly in the ground and covered and watered them well. We'll see if they will grow. I let the English cucumber stay too long in the nursery pot but it has been planted, as have the peppers. We'll see how they do. The recent soaking of the soil will help a lot.

The heavy rain was also good for the pansies and violas. Though if one looks closely you can see that a number of leaves got too much water. I've found these plants like more water than hot sun and it can be difficult to keep them happy when the sunny days are plentiful.