Not So Good Friday

Toronto Forecast

What is wrong with this picture? Normally, Good Friday is a great day to go kayaking. We're a few weeks into Spring, the sun usually shines, and that famous April weather warms us up as we slowly crawl out from our winter hibernation. Not so this year!
Check out these forecasts! Somehow Toronto got our weather! Look at that -- a forecast high of 25? In the first weekend in April? WTF? There's something wrong here!
Meanwhile, we on the We(s)t Coast were given a (hopefully) final blast on winter weather as a vicious winter storm rolled through. Yes, I said winter storm even though it's spring. Look at our Good Friday forecast -- below zero wind chills, high winds. In fact the storm topped out at 50 kmh sustained winds and gusts over 90 kmh. So needless to say no kayaking.

Victoria Forecast

So instead of hitting the water, Louise and I hit the gym. Our gym overlooks the upper harbour around the Bay Street bridge, where we watched what is normally flat water roil and twist. I even saw breakers under the Bay Street Bridge. Okay, so they weren't very big, but locals will know how unusual that is.
From there we headed down to the Ogden Point breakwater, which kindly agreed to pose in black and white for a few shots.

We saw the MV Coho coming in from Port Angeles, Washington. Port Angeles is almost directly south of Victoria, so normally the Coho comes straight into the harbour from the south, but today she was coming from the east along Victoria's southern shore, clearly having had to alter course in the storm.

From there, we headed to the bluff atop Clover Point overlooking Ross Bay. Here the winds were just insane. I stepped out of the car and could not move. Down along the shore, I could see people walking, but on the top of the bluff where I was, the wind was winning. It was the first time in my life I felt like the wind was going to knock me over. It was all I could do to hold onto the camera. I couldn't help but think of all those tv reporters who do stand ups in hurricanes. Louise said she'd never seen my hair getting blown straight back before.


From there, the wind blew us to King George Terrace, where I snapped this shot looking back at Gonzales Bay.


Then we headed to Willows Beach, which normally looks like this:

but today looked like this:

But here's where we found one person who knew how to enjoy himself on a windy day.