Pavement pinwheel

I went to bed last night with the news that ferry service has been cancelled for Vancouver Island, which is bad news for those on the Gulf Islands who have lost power. Crews can't get to them until the ferries are running again. 

It's not that bad here in Victoria. 

I saw little in the way of tossing trees from my bedroom window this morning, but from Fairfield Road, I can see the tops of the ancient towers of plane trees tossing. 

Chester Street, as is usual in windy weather, is littered with little grey fingers of blown away twigs with the occasionally chestnut -- blown from Cook Street? 

Lower down, the sidewalk is ankle deep in the the leaves placed in careful piles a couple of days ago, now scattered to the four winds. Well, one wind, anyway. 

I see work crews on the main roads at the rather futile task of blowing leaves back into piles. I hear leaf-blowers are being outlawed in California. 

High time.

On my way home, my eye is caught by a brilliant leafy pinwheel, waiting on the sidewalk for the next powerful gust.

Calm before the storm

 

That's a streetlight, not the sun

I wake up from the beginnings of a nightmare, and remember that when I went to bed, there were dire warnings of a "weather bomb", a "cyclone bomb", according to American meteorologists - a storm not seen on the west coast in ages, if at all.  Talk of hurricane force winds, possibly the speeds of a Category Three.

I was in Halifax eleven years ago, when Hurricane Earl, a Category One hurricane, eased into being merely a tropical storm.  I decided then that if that was a Category One, I wouldn't care to experience anything stronger.

I head out at daybreak, when it's beginning to rain, but before I put up my umbrella, I whip out my phone to capture Chester Street and my beloved arch of ancient plane trees, which, like all other trees, have been severely depleted and weakened by the dryness and heat of the spring and summer this year.  What will this wind do to them?

Canadian meteorologists are being comforting, saying there's a good chance that the storm will ease as it reaches the northern end of Vancouver Island.  Vancouver Island is a very large and long island, but we, at the southern tip, can still be affected, if only in our internet.

At dinnertime, I'm returning home down Vancouver Street from downtown Victoria, walking through my hushed neighbourhood.  It's as if the world is holding its breath.