No rain yesterday, at least none to speak of. I think we only added 2mm to the running total. It was very much a lull in the storm. Late last night though a new front moved in and the downpour has recommenced. I am certain that by tomorrow night (if not tonight) we will have our foot of rain.



To give you a sense of how much that is, even here, on the edge of the temperate rainforest we get something between 1900mm and 2400mm of precipitation a year. This week already we have had more than 10% of that fall.



One other marker of how devastating this rain can be is floating out in the channel in front of our house. There are hundreds of trees out there floating in the murky water with their rootballs still intact. These trees have slid of slopes in the watersheds around Howe Sound and plummeted down the fast moving creeks and rivers in what is known as a debris torrent. They litter the water and make it really hazardous for small boats.



The rain is due to continue tonight, and we're expecting upwards of 60mm in total for today and there is no sign that the rain will let up even into next week. Another couple of low pressure systems are keeping the southwesterly flow of air coming, and there is a huge deep low lying off the end of the Aleutians that is, for all intents and purposes, a hurricane. It has a low pressure centre of 952mb which is just incredibly low. It's acting like a big hole out in the ocean, sucking in air from all around it, bringing wet warm air up from the tropics to feed it and loading up on more moisture which it will deposit on us later next week.



I'll keep the tally going until a high pressure system clears us out.

Another day, another 46.2mm of rain making about 235mm this week. It's calm and not raining at the moment, but we expect another 30mm or so tonight, getting close to our "week of a foot of rain" forcast from Monday.



Progress on the ark is coming along nicely.

The tally continues with another 66.4 mm of rain falling yesterday. It's just after midnight and pouring buckets still. The heavy rainfall warning has been renewed for tonight with up to 80mm expected before the rain eases off.



We're up to 188.4 mm of rain in three days. That's seven and a half inches. Of rain.

Another 59mm of rain yesterday making for swollen creeks and heavier cascades all around the island. No flooding here that I can see although the ground is saturated and the water is pooling on grass and in meadows.



Elsewhere in the Lower Mainland, a major landslide in North Vancouver swept two houses away and likely took some lives. Hundreds of people have been evacuated from the slopes of Mount Seymour. In some parts of the North Shore, stations recorded up to 300mm of rain in 48 hours. The major problem is that the rain began falling on frozen ground, meaning that the earth couldn't absorb it. Then the temperatures rose dramatically - it's 18 degrees C in Abbotsford right now - meaning that the snowpack couldn't absorb it either. The snow just started to melt. All that water traveling over frost heave makes for a muddy soup on the mountain sides, and slides are inevitable. They are happening all over the Lower Mainland, but so far the only casualities have been in North Vancouver. The rivers are rising too, and there is a risk of some minor flooding, on the scale of a two or five year flood. It's not quite October 2003, but it's not far off.



As I write this morning the rain has resumed pouring after a break for a couple of hours. We expect one more day of rain, perhaps 40mm more and then a break before the rain returns on the weekend.

Okay...this is going to become a weather blog this week. Charting the flood.



Saturday we had a little snow fall but by midnight, it had turned to rain and it has been raining since then. 62.8 mm of rain fell Sunday and Monday and it hasn't stopped. At times it feels like the water is just flowing out of the sky. Up on the sceptic field there are five waterfalls pouring out of the forest and along the gully behind the field, which is about 45cms full of water.



At the moment it has stopped raining, but we are expecting as much as another 200mm by Thursday. Yesterday the forecast was for about a foot of rain this week.



It's times like this I'm glad my house is on pilings.

If you are on Bowen Island on January 22, which is a Saturday night and you are looking for a good time, come on to the contradance at Cates Hill chapel. My music mates Randy Vic and Dave Marshall will be joining me to play some jigs and reels while June Harmon teaches and calls the dances. It's high energy, fast paced, easy-to-learn fun. You are guaranteed a good time.



y friend Zelik Siegel had the thought to start up contradancing on Bowen. We're hoping to make it a regular event, so come on out to this one to get it off to a good start.



Call me at 9236 or leave a comment if you want more information.

Last night was about as cold as it ever gets around here: dropped to -8.



Wednesday night I came home late from the continent on the water taxi and we had a low low tide of 0.3 meters. Walking home in the dark, the water was so low, all I could see in the lagoon was a rime of frost around the edges of the mud flat.



Yesterday morning, as I went back to Horshoe Bay to fetch the car, The tide was high again, just coming down from a 5.0 meter height. We actually had to walk UP onto the Bowen Queen, which is very unusual as that little ferry ride very close to the water.



I'm amazed at the volume of water that sloshes around the Pacific Ocean.



In atmospheric news, the high pressure that is giving us the cold weather is sustaining the outflow conditions, meaning that out in the channel every night, we have gale force Squamish winds, blowing at 40 knots. It's been a largely cold and dry week around here.