It's Been Cold...

Take a close look at the shot below - small waves slopping between the rocks just a few feet offshore in Conception Bay. Now, look a little closer - about 2/3 the way up, to the right - that grey area?

That's salt water slush, Ma'am, yes, salt water slush...and that's cold!

Been nice, tho...lots of sun and good snow, not the heavy, wet kind, but light, dry sparkley stuff...pretty enough to entice us outside in -15, even with the wind blowing. A late afternoon, the sun hits the snow with this honey-tinged light, while dried grasses throw splintery shadows...

But it's about to get a cutting, if the laddies at Environment Canada's weather office are right - and they amazingly often are, considering the challenges of forecasting anything in the meteorlogical monkey puzzle of the North Atlantic that is Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. It's going to get very moist (25mm) and very warm (+9) for the next few days, which should cut the nice base we have back to naught but ice when it cools down later the week. More likely to need salt and sand than snowshoes, skis and poles...

But what the heck - it's only January, after all - lots of time for snow yet, isn't there? In this neck of the woods, winter's a battle between Hope Springs Eternal and The Depths Of Despair where weather fit for outdoor stuff is concerned...we can get buried, or have bare frozen ground, or rain, sleet, and freezing rain, or cold and sunny with a wind that drives the cold thru the heaviest parkas- or else just perfect, cold and sunny and still, the kind of day when you first notice the sun's getting just the faintest hint of direct warmth in it again...

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Where We Live

Conception Bay South - certainly not the most spectacular chunk of coastal scenery in the province, but we call it home. The community, for the most part, lies on a small coastal plateau, making it look flat and dull from the water when compared to the far more scenic northern shore of the bay you can see in the background. But the panorama seen from the top of Topsail Mountain certainly shows it does have a beauty of its own.

C.B.S., as it's commonly called, runs for about 20 kms. along the shores of Conception Bay. Formerly, there were seven distinct communities - Topsail, Chamberlains, Manuals, Long Pond, Kelligrews, Upper Gullies (that's us!) and Seal Cove - but the provincial government forced amalgamation some years ago, and for the most part, it's worked out well. Most residents enjoy modern services, and the town is now expanding at a pretty fair clip. Since it's close to St. John's, which is booming under the twin influences of offshore oil development and the stagnation of much of rural Newwfoundland due to fisheries failures, most of the demand is for housing development, although plans are now afoot to develop our first "big box store" plaza. And, over the last few years, there's been an explosion of McMansion subdivisions along our shorelines, with huge homes jammed cheek and jowl against each other in a display of architectural excess that only a property developer could love.

Since we're a good few kilometers up the bay from the open ocean, we have another advantage over "Sin Jawns"...weather! When the capital city is wreathed in fog, we're often under sunny skies, and the temperatures are usually 2-5 degrees warmer out here. Warmer temperatures, less crowding, lower taxes, even the cheapest gas on the island - I can live with somewhat bland scenery in exchange for that!