Sun lover

We're fortunate, here on the island; when it's hot, hot, hot on the mainland, here it's just hot. My sweet peas are wilting, but the sunflowers are happy.

Sunflower dressed in flame reds and yellows.

The weather people still have a heat warning posted, but they're promising rain for the middle of next week. I hope they're right.

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Tenemos suerte, aquí en la isla; el interior de la provincia se está tostando, con temperaturas alrededor de 40°, mientras que aquí solamente hace calor. Hoy apenas llegó a 32°.

Mis guisantes de olor se están marchitando pero los girasoles se sienten felices.

Foto: un girasol, vestido en colores de fuego.

Los meteorólogos todavía han subido una advertencia de extremos de calor, pero para mediados de la semana, pronostican lluvia. Ojalá tengan razón.

Wishing for winter

It's too hot for me. Two days ago I tried to go for a walk into the cool forest, heading for a lake at the bottom of a small hill. About 50 metres from the road, I had to turn back, already dizzy from the heat. The toasted moss on the rocks crunched under my feet like eggshells.

End of the hike.

The creamy flowers are Oceanspray, Holodiscus discolor.

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Hace demasiado calor. Traté de escaparlo, bajando hacia un laguito entre el bosque. No lo logré; a los 50 metros, ya quemada y aturdida por el sol, tuve que desistir y regresar a casa. El musgo sobre las rocas, bien tostado, crujía bajo mis pies, haciendo un ruido como de cascarones de huevos.

Foto: hasta aquí llegué. El arbusto con flores color crema es Holodiscus discolor, llamado aquí rocío de mar, aunque es un arbusto de sitios secos.

Low tide zone littles

 Just poking around at the base of rocks at the low tide line ...

Mussels (4 alive), barnacles, and a pair of flatworms, flowing like warm honey.

Mostly barnacles. Just because.

After the heat wave, when so many mussels died, exposed to unaccustomed high temperatures as they were, I am glad to see some still surviving. Down in the lower intertidal zone, an odour of rotting sea creatures is still noticeable, but not nearly as strong as it was back in July. But there were more empty mussel shells to be seen than there were live mussels.

A bit of everything: pink-tipped green anemones, red and green algae, barnacles, limpets, a fragment of sand dollar test, and empty mussel shells.

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Examinando lo que vive a la base de las rocas en la zona intramareal baja ...

1. Mejillones (cuatro vivos), bálanos, y un par de gusanos planos, platelmintos. Estos fluyen como si fueran hechos de miel tibia.
2. Una piedra cubierta de bálanos. Porque sí.

Después de la ola de calor, cuando murieron tantos mejillones, expuestos al temperaturas no acostumbradas durante las horas de la marea baja, ahora me dió gusto ver algunos mejillones vivos. En la zona baja intramareal esta semana, todavía persiste un olor a podrido, pero no es tan fuerte como estaba en julio. Pero sí, vi más conchas vacías de mejillones muertos que mejillones vivos.

Tercera foto: un poco de todo. Anémonas de puntas color de rosa, Anthopleura elegantissima, algas rojas y verdes, bálanos, lapas, un pedazo de concha de dólar de mar, y conchas vacías de mejillones.

Sunburnt

 A couple of weeks ago I went to look at the cliff faces along the shore of Upper Campbell Lake again, wondering how the rock-dwelling mosses and other plants had weathered the heat wave.

Not well. The moss was brown and crispy, crumbling when I touched it, even the moss in the ditches at the bottom where they could hope to find moisture. Ferns near the top were toasted and shrunken. Here and there curled, brown leaves clung to cracks in the stone.

A few green leaves surviving near the foot of the cliff.

Ocean spray, crispy.

And yet, and yet ...

Some small plants are managing to find water down there somewhere in the cracks.

Up top, where the cliff levels off, the forest stays green.

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Hace un par de semanas fui a mirar otra vez los precipicios rocosos al lado del lago Upper Campbell, queriendo saber como habían aguantado los musgos y otras plantas durante la reciente ola de calor.

No muy bien. Los musgos estaban tostados, color café pardo, crujientes; se desmoronaban al tocarlos, hasta los que crecen al pie de la roca en la zanja donde normalmente se puede encontrar un poco de humedad. Los helechos allá arriba estaban quemados y encojidos. Esparcidas entre las grietas quedaban hojas muertas, secas y quebradizas.

Primera foto: todavía había una que otra hoja verde al pie de la roca.

Segunda foto: Rocío oceánico, Holodiscus discolor, achicharrado.

Pero sin embargo ...

Tercera foto: algunas plantitas de alguna manera han encontrado un poco de agua allí en las grietas de la roca.

Allá arriba, donde el cerro se aplana un poco, el bosque permanece verde.

Heart of the earth

So the heat wave continues; the weather is heading back towards normal, but now there are fires. 42 new ones in the last couple of days in BC. Lytton is burning; the whole town is up in flames. Old wood buildings, dry as tinder in the best of times, baked under a 49.5ºC. heat wave; not much will survive.

I have driven through Lytton many times, on my way north or south, to and from Bella Coola. A tiny town, a stop for a cold drink on a hot, empty highway. Dry country, parched brown in the summer, frozen solid in the winter. Harsh country, home to strong people. But this is too much.

We need rain!

All I have to offer is a patch of self-heal, growing in a ditch at the bottom of a stony cliff.

Prunella vulgaris.

Also called heal-all, or heart of the earth. Good, comforting names.

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Y sigue el calor. El pronóstico meteorológico mejora, pero ahora vienen los incendios. Hay 42 incendios forestales nuevos en los últimos dos dias. El pueblito de Lytton se está quemando; todo el pueblo estalló en llamas. Son constucciones viejas de madera, secas, muy secas en este terreno árido, y ahora horneadas bajo una ola de calor donde la temperatura (una temperatura seca) llegó ayer a 49,5º C. Poco del pueblo saldrá intacto.

He pasado muchas veces por Lytton, camino al norte o al sur, en mis viajes a Bella Coola, unas pocas casas, un lugar para detenerse en el camino largo a tomar un refresco helado.  Todo seco, la hierba tostada a un color café amarillento en verano, y todo bajo hielo en en invierno. Terreno áspero, donde vive una gente fuerte. ¡Pero esto es demasiado!

¡Necesitamos lluvia!

Todo lo que puedo ofrecer ahora es una foto de la planta a que llamamos "curalotodo", o "corazón de la tierra". Buenos nombres para una planta humilde, nombres que recuerdan consuelo.

Estas crecen en una zanja al pie de un precipicio.

Blue is cool

Saturday was a hot day. And Sunday will be hotter, in the upper 30s. Even now, in the middle of the night, the temperature is 25º, the usual maximum for midday in August. (I know it's hotter in other places, but this is BC, in the temperate rainforest. None of us, people, trees, and critters, are built for the heat.)

Looking at water makes me feel a bit cooler.

Buttle Lake, with a cool breeze blowing.

Stay safe! Drink water! Add salt! Stay cool!

A Skywatch post.

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Hace calor. Y vienen dias de más calor; nos amenazan con 39º. Ahorita, a medianoche, estamos a 25º, que es normalmente la temperatura máxima a mediodía en el mes de agosto.

Y ya sé que en otros lugares, hace más calor, pero estamos en el norte, en medio de bosques pluviales de zona templada. Ninguno de nosotros, ni la gente, ni los árboles, ni los animales, estamos hechos para el calor.

Se siente más fresco, mirando fotos de agua. Este es el Lago Buttle, con una brisa templada.

¡Cuídense! ¡No se olviden de beber más agua! ¡Y coman cosas saladas!

Cool water

It's too hot. We're starting an extreme heat wave over most of BC, with temperatures up to 10º above normal for this area for this week. That's Celsius, not Farenheit. I'm hunkering down, staying inside, keeping safe.

This looks cooling.

Unnamed waterfall, one of many such near Buttle Lake.

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Hace calor. Estamos entrando a una ola de calor que cubre la mayor parte de la provincia de Colombia Británica, con temperaturas que superan lo normal con hasta 10º C., y que durará más o menos una semana. Yo me estoy escondiendo en casa, frente al ventilador, cuidándome.

Esta catarata sin nombre, una de muchas cerca del Lago Buttle, imparte una sensación de frescura.

Dreaming of icebergs

It's too hot. Too #$@&%*! hot.

Granted, for the rest of the world, we have it good here in Campbell River, but it's all what you're used to, and what you have ways to cope with.

Today, it reached 31 degrees Celsius here. We're lucky; over on the mainland, not too far away, and north of here, in Lillouet, it was 38 today. The weather people have put out heat warnings; stay cool, people!

In BC, it used to be unusual to find air conditioning in homes. In 2001, only about 10% of households were air conditioned. In the last few years, that percentage has gone up to 34%, and growing. (Report by BC Hydro)

I looked up the historical records for Campbell River, and found these graphs:

Averages and maximums, 1981 to 2010, a few blocks from my house, just above the high tide line.

August is the hottest month, and in those 30 years, the maximum temperature was 23.3 degrees.

Going back further, 1961 to 1990. Maximum for this period: 22.4 degrees.

I grew up in this climate. No wonder I'm feeling the heat!

(In the middle of the stuffy night, I drowsily consider a move to Nunavut. [Photo by Clare Kines] [On Twitter]  Where the icebergs float in the bay, and the permafrost is just that: permanent. Come morning, I change my mind; it's too hot to think of packing.)

Watery suns

It's too hot. Summer has come, finally, to the Lower Mainland, and it's making up for lost time. Out at the far end of the Fraser Valley in Chilliwack, the temperature reached a record 34.7 °C (almost 90 °F) almost 2 °C higher than the previous record, 90 years unmatched. They tell us it will be hotter later in the week. Oof!

Here in Delta, we're a bit cooler; 30 °C (86 °F).  It's still 'way too hot for me; I'm a product of the westcoast rain forest. I'm glad to have my shade garden, with its sheltering circle of tall evergreens. I cringe away from the naked sun of our summers.

But these cool suns from Vancouver Island, I have no trouble with:

Sunfish, otherwise known as the sunflower star. Cool and wet. Lovely!

Deep red sunflower star, under a couple of inches of water.

This one's a baby, barely a couple of inches tip to tip.

And I may as well add a few stars, too.

A pink brittle star, maybe the Daisy brittle star. It is less than the width of my thumbnail.

Long-armed brittle star, burrowing into the sand. Also very tiny.

Blood star, of some sort. Long, skinny arms.

A small leather star. I like the sunburst in the centre; two rows of brown dots connected by radiating lines.

And the ubiquitous purple star.

Four purple stars. One is pinkish orange, but it's still a purple star. Names can be confusing.

Aaahhh! I feel cooler, already.