Lucky, the canoeing sucks around here!

 

They say it was good about 5 years ago.

 

Damn.

 

Now THAT'S what I call a waterfront property!

(good luck!)

 

What lake? Rice Lake isn't bad right now but that could change if they have to open up the dams. 2014 was Rice Lakes worst year on record. There was a website showing water measurements. Look for one for your lake. Maybe it's there.

 

That's Dalhousie Lake ,on the Mississippi system.
I've been using the MVCA(Conservation Authority ) website for years to check the levels from home.
Had to go see for myself yesterday.
Here's typical June level.

That MASL # is the water level.
As of this am. We have hit 158,so a meter and a half above this pic.

 

Holy shit! Sorry to see that. Though I'm high and dry at home, the family cottage on Georgian Bay is very close to the water table and with high water levels we sometimes get very close to a spring flood when it's combined with a lot of run-off. Freaks me out.

Can't imagine your potential for an insurance nightmare.

 

Luckily the cottage is built on a hill,the floor of the shack still has quite a bit of room before it gets wet.
The boathouse however has water almost knee high,but it's just a gravel floor and has seen water more than once,so we plan around that.

 

Well, in Quebec (also NB), very sad floody Easter period in many regions :
record Winter snow falls melted, with some rain, in about three to four weeks
causing record floods around many rivers.
The five feet snow cover on my backyard melted in three weeks !

 

Please send some to us! We woke up this morning to virtually no water over a huge area of the city.

My neighbour kindly offered water from his (quite large) garden pond to use in the toilet.

 

I was expecting all 0f this for a while. The problem was that the snow just kept on coming and coming, and never went away since November. And that meant that the spring run-off was going to be huge; especially if there was any sort of quick "heat-wave" (i.e., even anything in the 5-12-degree range). Had there been brief respites from the snow, and some of it went away in dribs and drabs over the winter, that would have been one thing. But it just never left. It just stayed there...waiting until we exhaled.

Won't be long until insurance against flood damage will simply be unavailable. It's the biggest share of insurance payouts these days.

Should I assume there is no such thing as a "basement" in a cottage, just beams holding the thing up?

 

Should I assume there is no such thing as a "basement" in a cottage, just beams holding the thing up?

Yeah,no basement in my place ,just beams sitting on footings.
Lots of folks around me have renoed cottages into year round home and have dug basements,better hope they have a turbo boost on their sump pumps.
The water comes up as high as my lawn regularly,just never gets to be knee deep on the grass.

 

Quebec announced that a hydro dam southeast of here was in danger of failing, and urged folks in the region to evacuate. Now THAT'S spooky.

 

Alberta is sending help,,. stand by

 

Is it a real dam or an infrastructure project that was paid for complete with kickbacks but never built.

 

Dam on Rouge River in danger of collapse as flood waters rise

 

Is it a real dam or an infrastructure project that was paid for complete with kickbacks but never built.

It was built to handle a "once in a thousand years" flood level and has now reached that level. Purveyors of climate-change dogma will no doubt be rubbing hands with glee, but it's not the first time that weather events have exceeded guess-timated expectations, and many occurred before climate change became a "thing".

The "good" news is that a few tens of farms and cottages are threatened by a potential collapse of this dam, and their owners already evacuated. Not like New Orleans / Katrina where being wrong on their "once in a thousand years" guess-timation upset or ended hundreds of thousands of lives.

Maybe the statistical models for these things need to be revisited. Because of climate change of course.

 

It was built to handle a "once in a thousand years" flood level and has now reached that level. Purveyors of climate-change dogma will no doubt be rubbing hands with glee, but it's not the first time that weather events have exceeded guess-timated expectations, and many occurred before climate change became a "thing".

Funny you mentioned that.
Up at the cottage ,the spring flood after the big ice storm('98) was called 'a thousand year flood' and was the highest that my mom had ever seen since building the place in '59.
The water off the corner of my deck that spring was about 30cm deep,when I was up on Wed, it was over 45cm deep.
2 years ago the spring flood approached this year's level as well,infact it took out my water punp in the boathouse for the first time ever.
My neighbour has hot water tanks under their place and they lost them that year and lost them again this year I'm sure.
I think I got there in time to save my pump,we had raised it up,but that remains to be seen.
Long story short,at least 3 "thousand year floods" in 20 years.
This is my boathouse on Wed.

 

It may be time to revisit building codes. They have already been revised for things like earthquakeproofing, and use of asbestos, etc. Water-related threats probably need to be reconsidered.

 

One of the 'features' of climate change is the increased frequency of extreme events. Nobody said things like that never occurred before. It will just happen more and more often.

It's not a dogma unfortunately, there many signs: seawater rising, increased erosion and weathering, climate records, melting of the glaciers, change in the migration patterns etc... I strongly suggest reading the actual scientific studies (there are thousands of them). A lot of them can be accessed for free. There is no propaganda.

You may argue that it's all related to human pollution, but climate change is a fact.

 

You may argue that it's all related to human pollution, but climate change is a fact.

But what about."Coal, beautiful clean coal" (Donald Trump)

I personally don't get caught up in the "Climate Change" debate and live my life as if it's true. What can it hurt? I recycle, try to reduce my carbon footprint and hope to leave this earth better than I found it if possible.

 

A dam broke yesterday evening in Laval-sur-le-Lac causing emergency evacuation !

 

The distribution of water, potable and otherwise, frozen, falling, or flowing state, is one of the top 10 public policy issues around the globe. If it's not coping with droughts or disappearing icecap, it's coping with floods, cyclones, unmanageable snow-dumps, or debating water-access rights. And even when the "misdistribution" of water is physically manageable, there remains the challenge of it being economically manageable. Here in Ottawa, there are two stories on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen today: the flooding (obviously), and the costs and municipal deficit created by snow-removal this past winter. And, while a minor point in the face of all the other more personally/individually catastrophic consequences of the flooding, one, and potentially two, of the interprovincial bridges that residents on both sides of the Ottawa river take to work (including all those folks who issue your CPP and EI cheques, process your passport renewal requests, and make your food safe) are now off-limits, with bus traffic diverted well out of the way, and taking much longer to bring people to work (taking your car won't really help because the need is for fewer commuting vehicles, not more). In short, even if one isn't directly affected by water threatening your own residence or place of business, the economic impacts of flooding get spread around. And of course, the future of home insurance, for anything other than maybe theft, lies in doubt.

So, even IF one has a beautifully clean artesian well on their property, and the tastiest water ever (my favorite was a spring coming out of the rocks, just off the highway in Hinton, AB, - though it may have been Edson - where my dad and I saw a bunch of truckers stop and learned firsthand why they did), the financial viability of many things we depend on ARE dictated by expenses that depend on the distribution and management of water, whether it be sustainability of infrastructure, emergency services, snow removal, or anything else where tough choices have to be made about spending the public purse, and sometimes the private/corporate one.

I did a little poking around yesterday about hydrology, and learned two terms I was previously unfamiliar with. One is albedo - the proportion of sunlight that is reflected from the earth's surface back into space. Snow and ice reflect more light back up, rather than absorbing it as heat. The other term I learned is cryosphere, which earth scientists use to refer to the polar ice caps and their ecology, including glaciers, land ice, "water ice" (floes, icebergs). Some 80% of the earth's fresh water supply is stored in the polar caps...for now.

 

Nice update from today,the deck has been ripped off the front of my place and has been re-located to the side yard.
We had been thinking about a new deck....I guess we will have to think a bit harder now.

 

Dear Quebec,

Sorry about the flooding.

Sincerely,
Alberta


Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

 

Dear Quebec,

Sorry about the flooding.

Sincerely,
Alberta

P.S. Just kidding, go fuck yourself.

Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

PS.....wanna buy some oil?

 

(my favorite was a spring coming out of the rocks, just off the highway in Hinton, AB, - though it may have been Edson - where my dad and I saw a bunch of truckers stop and learned firsthand why they did)
.

The last time I was through there one of the ones I know of wasn't running anymore.

 

If so, more's the pity. It was simply the best water I've ever tasted in my life.

 

The interprovincial bridge, I used to take the commuter bus to work on, has been closed for the time being, simply because the water is coming too damn close to it. Authorities say they need to wait until the water is low enough to be able to inspect the underside of the bridge (seen in an aerial photo here). But it's not only that. The water is coming with such force, that waves sweep up over the side of the bridge, such that anyone driving could find themselves being suddenly unable to see where they are or what's in front or beside them. So, accidents waiting to happen.

In the good old days, and not that long ago since they were during my own childhood, Ottawa was a lumber town. Doubtless you've seen the NFB film "Logdriver's Waltz", which was about the Ottawa Valley logging industry. Those logs would be shepherded down the Ottawa river from up north, where they would be formed into big logjams in that large area in the lower right hand quadrant of the picture, to be turned into matches and other wood products at the old E.B.Eddy plant across the street from those brown brick towers. If we still had those logs gathered up there, with these currents and water-level, doubtless they'd go over the edge of the dam and that bridge would be toast.

 

Weren't no hippies, buddy. It was the lineup of truckers filling up drinking jugs that attracted my attention. T'was clearly some place they stopped at regularly. And after tasting it, I knew why.

 

It was the lineup of truckers filling up drinking jugs ....

my bad, those guys are known for their cleanliness. do you think they rinsed out those piss jugs before filling them up with the blessed spring water?

 

Alberta is sending help,,. stand by

Good it will give all those unemployed oil workers something to do

 

Weren't they all just in Ottawa? (or was that the truckers?)

 

Not all that glitters is gold.
I was on a canoe trip on the Nahanni River a decade ago in the middle of some of most beautiful undisturbed terrain to be found in the world.
At one rest spot, we found a similar natural spring with beautiful, crystal clear water flowing out. My canoe partner filled his canteen and within hours fell deathly ill due to parasites and ringworm.

Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

 

Not all that glitters is gold.
I was on a canoe trip on the Nahanni River a decade ago in the middle of some of most beautiful undisturbed terrain to be found in the world.
At one rest spot, we found a similar natural spring with beautiful, crystal clear water flowing out. My canoe partner filled his canteen and within hours fell deathly ill due to parasites and ringworm.

Fair. I figured that if it was frequented by those familiar with it on their regular route, it passed a test that a spring in a secluded location had not likely passed. No trucker wants a case of the runs to delay their delivery. But yeah, as my wife finds out daily in her work, not everything that is "natural" is necessarily all that safe or good for ya.

One of the neighbourhoods near the river has been advised to avoid using tap water for cleaning, washing, flushing, showering, etc. The tap-water is still safe to drink, but the sewer system is at or beyond capacity, so municipal authorities want as little going down the drain as possible. Don't shower, don't flush: Overloaded sewer threatens a Westboro neighbourhood That's not TOO too bad. Folks in the outlying areas are seeing their sewage and septic tank waste come back up. Not the sort of thing you want to be wading through, no matter how high your hip-waders come up to.

 

not quite ... we have a cure for one ... not the other.^)@#

 

Sainte-Marthe is built on a lake bed. How did that happen?

In Sainte-Marthe, the construction of the dike allowed much of the town to be built, effectively, on the actual lake bed.

"I think the focus and the question is, what kind of circumstances over the last several decades led to large urban areas
completely [dependent] on a system of dikes," François Brissette, a hydrologist and professor at the École de Technologie
Supérieure, told CBC Montreal's Daybreak.

"There is a nonsense there. And that's the key problem that should be looked at."

Brissette said proper bylaws and regulations would have prevented people from building homes on flood plains.

"There would have never been a need for those dikes, and there would have never been dike failures, and there would have
never been all the problems we are witnessing now," he said.