Marilyn's Photos - Jan 27 2026 - 1999 vs 2026 Battle of the Snow
This week’s snowstorm is the worst since the 1940s. That got my attention. 46 to 56 cm of snow was recorded in Toronto.
I had thought the 1999 storm was the worst, but that’s not the case. I remember the 1999 storm when Toronto declared war on snow and the Canadian Armed Forces were called in to shovel, shovel, shovel. So much snow had accumulated over the month to reach 145 cm and that was the problem. So far, January 2026 only has a total of 88.2 cm accumulation - that’s in comparison to the 1999 storm.
Back then, the mayor was Mel Lastman, interviewed by Peter Mansbridge and Adrienne Arsenault as big-time CBC news. Today it is Mayor Olivia Chow and she seems to be managing fine. She preempted the worst by actually addressing the February 2025 snow deficiencies that made some headlines then. There weren’t any high-profile journalists interviewing her on a crises this weekend. She spoke to the Metro Morning host, David Common. It is great to have someone managing the risks before they become a crisis.
But here I am on Tuesday and looking out at the snow flurries. Wasn’t the storm going to end on Monday? I check the radar and it has a calming effect - it says “this too will pass.”
It can always be worse. Because there is that great snowstorm of 1944. It had 76 cm fall in West Virginia. I don’t think of that state as having a lot of snow plows then or now.
And there are worse than the 1944 world’s worst. An Italian village got 8 feet of snow in 18 hours in 2015. Buffalo got almost 7 feet of snow in that Snowvember 2014 storm. And Mount Ibuki on Japan in 1927 had 38.8 feet of snow standing on the ground - the greatest recorded natural snow depth in world history.
Isn’t it nice to have world records to put things into perspective?
Here’s a railway picture of Silver Lake, Colorado in 1921 when the snow fall was 192 cm in 24 hours.
2001 A Space Odyssey was on television the other night, and the ending remains an inspiring and strange experience. I looked it up and of course, there are answers for everything now. The Star Child in the finale “represents the next stage of human evolution - a transformed, immortal, and enhanced being (a superman”) born from astronaut Dave Bowman. After traversing the Stargate and experiencing a rapid, dreamlike aging process, the monolith facilitates Bowman’s rebirth into this fetus-like form.
And the picture below? It looks like an interpretation of the Star Child birth to me. It is a creation from the Painters’ Palettes at the Monday morning watercolour class. I take pictures of their paint palettes, then manipulate the abstracts in Flaming Pear’s Flexify and then put together a new image.
No comments:
Post a Comment