Mixed Weather Weekend

The May long weekend for Saturday and Sunday has been mixed.  This is traditionally garden planting weekend for all the main season crops.  It's been good for that because the sunny parts of the weekend have been in the high teens, but we had some rain showers Saturday afternoon as well.  It's the time of year when all the brush and grass explodes and everything is very green in the Bella Coola Valley. Grizzly

High Water Freshet & Rain

Last week the hot weather brought the Bella Coola River and tributaries up sharply.  Then on Saturday and Sunday the rain started and we got a fairly substantial rainfall over a few days.  The river came up even more and was flowing pretty good, but well below any threat of a flood level.  It's subsided a bit this week, because we are back to seasonal temperatures, but fairly pleasant.  Grizzly

Sandhill Cranes

While traveling across the Chilcotin Plateau between Bella Coola and Williams Lake this week, I noticed a couple of Sandhill Cranes flying along close to Highway 20.  I waited for them to land in a meadow and then walked to the edge and took this picture.  They are a large beautiful bird standing 4' tall.  Occasionally they stop in the Bella Coola Valley on their migrations. Grizzly

Atnarko River Freshet

Here's a photo of the normally clear and much smaller Atnarko River with the runoff from the spring freshet starting at the beginning of the week.  Grizzly

Freshet Starts

The much advertised heat wave hit the Bella Coola Valley on Saturday this weekend when we saw temperatures of 27 or 28C and Sunday and Monday were similar.  It only took about 24 hours for the effects of the heat and warm nights on the snow pack melt to be seen in the Bella Coola River.  Today it's up over half a metre and has the spring brown colour which we'll see until late May or early June when the glacial green and grey kicks in.

The warm weather has been very nice for early in the month. Grizzly

Lime Green and Low Snow

I've been away on and off for the better part of two weeks and in that time the Bella Coola Valley has turned into that 'lime green' colour that is so pleasant in the spring with all the new leaves on the cottonwood, birch and alder that haven't fully darkened.  The weather has been a real mix, with not much heat in the later half of April, lots of showery weather and low snow like this morning when the snow level was down to about 1500' on the mountains. Grizzly

High Temperature?

According to Global TV, Bella Coola was the warmest place in Canada today at 13.6C!  If we were the warmest - it doesn't say much about the weather in the rest of the country. Even at 13 it felt cool with the breeze when the sun wasn't out and snow from the rain Friday was 1/2 way down the mountains in the Bella Coola Valley.

It's perfect spring weather for one of the most pungent spring plants - the skunk cabbage plants.  Our little grove has usually been uprooted and pruned by spring feeding bears by now but there has been none in it to date, so it's coming into full bloom.  Hoping for warmer weather tomorrow for all.  Grizzly

Spring Time in Bella Coola

When it's time to do the first lawn mowing in the Bella Coola Valley, that's my barometer of spring and we are there.  Last weekend's warmth with showery weather this week have greened up everything.  Lots of trees budding and lawns are green.  The weekend wasn't as good as the last one, more like an April showery weekend.  But it's time to move on from winter activities at East Branch and concentrate on gardening.
Grizzly

Easter Weekend Cutthroat Weather

A spectacular Easter Sunday weekend and happy Easter to my blog readers.  It was a great weekend of fine weather.  The Bella Coola River is gin clear with lots of salmon fry moving downstream , making cutthroat and Dolly Varden trout happy.  I spent a bit of time on the river with my daughter who was home for the weekend and we had some great trout moments.

With a high temperature of 21 C, I have to admit we had to sit in the shade for awhile in the afternoon, which seemed a bit odd for March 31st. Grizzly

16 C and Mosquitoes

A spectacular spring day in the Bella Coola Valley today, with no wind and clear skies and some real  warmth.  The Bella Coola River and it's tributaries are all very low, reaching the lowest point of the year before the snow melt starts.  The down side with 16C weather is that it brought out hordes of those early big dumb mosquitoes!  Grizzly

Fresh Snow and Sun

It's been another mixed week of weather, with a few cold wet days.  Not this morning though, the valley had a nice one inch or less dusting of spring snow which melted off by noon and the sun came out and we had some spectacular classic Bella Coola views of the fresh snow on the mountains. Grizzly

Cup Fungus

There was just enough rain in the Bella Coola Valley this weekend to keep this cup fungus half full.  It was actually a fairly typical blustery March weekend, with a complete mix of sunny periods, rain squalls and even a couple of snow flakes in our area.  Grizzly

Wet Week

The week started out not too bad, the Bella Coola River was low and gin clear, but by today the heavy rain and warmer temperatures we had the last two days have caused some higher water and colour in the Bella Coola River.  The freezing level has been much higher as well, with lots of avalanches rumbling in the background.  Grizzly

Mountains and Fields

A picture perfect March day in the Bella Coola Valley.  Its been a nice week, we started with a bit of outflow winds earlier in the week, but never had the bitter cold temperatures with it, just above freezing.  The week got progressively better until today with the beautiful skies and 12 C high temperature.  Grizzly

Snow

 It's been a week of up and down weather in the Bella Coola Valley.  The big rain storm that passed mostly south out us, didn't miss us entirely.  Down in the Bella Coola Valley things were just on the edge of freezing enough of the time that most of the precipation either came as rain or wet snow that has melted in the last few days.  At higher elevations it was a different story. It all came down as snow, and what was an enemic snow pack to the east of us along Heckman Pass and Tweedsmuir Park higher elevations now has a respectable snowpack of well over 4'.  There was nearly 3' of new snow this week in the alpine areas.  Cross country ski racers running the 28th annual Tweedsmuir Ski Club cross country race had to fight to get the course in shape, but by all accounts the race was great and with a turnout of over 70 racers a big success.  Grizzly

Hazelnut Trees Flowering on Schedule

If you follow any plant phenology I am sure you will have your favourite plants that you take note of.  One of ours is the Hazelnut tree we have because it is so showy when the yellow catkins burst and begin pollinating.  There is so little new colour around this time of year.  Ours is about right on schedule when I looked at it today. The catkins are large and the pollen is just about ready to be released.  Ours normally pollinates at the end of February, although in 2011 it was nearly a month late with the long winter we had that winter. 

The eastern end of the Bella Coola Valley received a bit a snow over the weekend - up to 12" or more and a fairly good fall in the pass of Highway 20.  Grizzly

River Photo

The Bella Coola River is in it's lowest winter state, with many of the tributaries almost at a trickle because of the winter low flows.  The colour of the lower river yesterday was being affected by the Nusatsum River that had a lot of clay/glacial silt from thawing banks being transferred down, which always makes for a nice colour.  Grizzly

February Snows

The last two mornings in the upper Bella Coola Valley we have awoke to wet snow - I think the first snow this month.  Also a power outage this morning caused by the wet heavy snow on trees.  Our Hazel Nut tree is fully loaded in catkins and it looked fairly heavy with it's fresh load of wet snow today.  The week otherwise has been more of the same - mild and a bit wet.  Grizzly

Non Winter Continues

The non winter weather that a lot of BC and the Bella Coola Valley has been getting continued this week with more days of mostly above freezing and smatterings of rain.  Today I noticed the chickweed is starting to flower and produce seeds in my garden...hardly fair that it gets such a head start on the annual battle of the weeds.

Thought you would enjoy the photo today - it's the view you get as reach the top of Heckman Pass heading west to Bella Coola on Highway 20.  There is a turnout view point right at the top and most winters you can't get into it because of the deep snow, but this year it's nicely plowed out.  It's a great short stop with a fantastic view of the Coast Mountains to the west.  Grizzly

My Favourite Burnt Tree

Mrs Grizzly and I were snowshoeing along a trail in Tweedsmuir Park at East Branch today when my wife abruptly proclaimed, "I think this is my favourite burnt tree".  It brought me to a quick stop and got my mind off my dry walling job I was thinking about.  I had to back track to see what she was talking about.  I have to admit I hadn't paid it much attention, but she's correct, it is a beautiful old burnt tree.  It was a victim of the 2009 Heckman Pass Wildfire, and is one of the less common but beautufil Whitebark Pine trees (search "Whitebark Pine" in my blog for previous posts).  You can really see the unique form they take after growing for several hundred years.  I agreed with her - it's now "My Favourite Burnt Tree" as well.

Winter hasn't really been a winter thought at East Branch.  We barely have two feet of snow at the Highway 20 gauge in the pass and those two feet are soft and fluffy, you can't even step far off a packed trail in snowshoes without sinking down almost to the ground.  Time is not on winter's side any longer - there would have to be several snowfalls of more than a couple feet each to catch up.  Grizzly