Mt. Nusatsum

Mt. Nusatsum

Monday, November 16, 2009

Snow and Power Outages - No Floods!

Well the snow that started yesterday kept up till the wee hours this morning.   Most areas of the valley received at least 5-15 cm, a lot more as you go east in the valley, more like 30 cm.  In some areas the snow was a lot heavier and wetter than other areas, but generally pretty heavy snow .  Highway 20 on “The Hill” is reported to have received a serious amount of snow that kept the highway ploughing contractors busy.  The power went out in most of the valley in the middle of the night when one of the large trees at the rock cut near the Village of Bella Coola came down across the power line and the highway.  There were also  a number of smaller trees heavily laden with wet snow which fell partially on the highway.  Further up valley the power is still out in the Stuie area tonight. The public schools were closed today, because the buses could not get between schools till mid morning when the tree was cleared and the power and heat restored in the schools.  The good news is that the big rains stayed further south and missed us.  Virtually all the precipitation in the Bella Coola Valley came down as snow.  The temperature in the morning was close to 0o C and it more or less stayed there into this evening.

 

All in all, a typical November day, early wet heavy snows are always a challenge for everyone.  It appears as though the mountain snowpack is quite substantial already which provides ideal conditions for all of our Grizzly and Black bears to head off and find their winter dens.  Last year we had a low early season snowpack and some very cold weather in December which along with fewer fall spawning salmon likely left bears in vulnerable conditions for denning.  With this snowfall  in the valley, it will be a lot quieter on the bear activity in the valley bottom and the bears can feel secure and warm in their dens, although there will be those that prefer to feed on late season spawning coho salmon around for a while yet.  Grizzly

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