– by Steve Sakiyama –
While my wife and I were flying to New York City via Toronto, our connecting flight was cancelled due to high winds and a hurricane alert at the Big Apple. This meant we were stranded overnight in Toronto along with hundreds of others who shared our predicament. Crowds of tired travellers flooded the airport bus pick-up area and waited for their hotel shuttles. And waited …
As we huddled in the cold and dark, I chatted with a financial advisor from New York City. He was in Toronto for … trapeze lessons. Really? People do this? As we joked about the similarities between high finance on Wall Street and high wire flying, an elderly woman tugged on my arm. In her shaking hand was a note with “Delta” scribbled on it. “Don’t worry,” I said as we gingerly maneuvered her through the milling crowds to the Delta Hotel shuttle. When the doors opened she had a sudden burst of energy and jumped into it like an excited child entering the gates of Disneyworld.
After her shuttle faded into the night, we met a fellow from Cincinnati who looked like a dark-haired version of John Candy. “Come here often?” he asked.
“Only during hurricanes,” my wife replied, “by the way, what do people from Cincinnati pack for a hurricane?”
“We bring a lot of hairspray,” he said with an impish grin.
Our hotel shuttle finally arrived but for some unknown reason my wife and I were not allowed to board. Mr. Cincinnati yelled over the din of traffic, “Didn’t you get the secret password??” He squeezed past us into the shuttle, pressed his face against the window and slowly mouthed the words, “secret password … secret password!”
Speaking of high winds, the intense storms we can experience here on the B.C. coast are called “mid-latitude cyclones”. We live in the mid-latitude region of the globe, and it is frequented by cold air from the north and warm air from the south. When these cold and warm air masses meet the resulting horizontal temperature contrast creates the driving energy for the storm. This meteorological “meet and greet” occurs frequently during the winter. It creates a low pressure centre, different types of fronts and winds that can pack a punch.
So will the late fall and winter be dark and stormy? It looks like the El Nino currently in place along the equatorial Pacific will reach out and tug on the sleeve of our weather here. As a result the long range outlook tilts the odds in favour of a warmer and drier than normal fall for the South Island.
As we step into this month, write “October” on a piece of paper and show it to family, friends and even complete strangers waiting at bus stops. During this month of harvest, ask them to help you celebrate the many things we have to be thankful for. Let them take you to October, so you can step through its open doors and be carried away into a wonderland of natural beauty that surrounds us.
~ Weatherwit.
Questions about weather or if you are from Cincinnati with a secret password, email: weatherwit@gmail.com
