Hi Tweets,

Jack Bowling writes, regarding my plaint of winter overstaying its welcome
here:

>Correct, even though coloured by a certain amount of hyperbole.

Not hyperbole. Simple reporting.

The local TV stations made this a main story on the evening news: they said
specifically 10 *meters* (~30 ft) of snow on local mountains, not feet, of
snow at Cypress Bowl and Grouse Mountain just above the city here; they
televised the announcement of first-time-ever June skiing by the people who
operate the ski slopes there who are used to packing up their winter
operations in March; they showed film of new snow falling up there on June
01, as it has been falling during much of the months of April and May as
well as most of the winter, as I said.

At the same time on June 01 it was snowing moderately heavily on the local
mountain peaks, down at sea level I looked out a window at my office and
*saw* wet snow mixed in with the deluging rain (probably localised
downdrafting from one of the cumulonimbus cells, Jack), and when I went to
get a sandwich at a local bakery at 12.30 PM., it was cold enough that
people's breath steamed as it would on any winter day.

>Indeed, the negative effects of a deep spring snowpack on our birds is
>what is often lost in the shuffle when we revel in their late
>appearance in the valleys. What will all those Wilson's Warblers do if
>they can't get to the mountain avalanche chutes? Delay breeding? Same
>for Golden-crowned Sparrows. And marsh nesting insectivores such as
>Red-winged Blackbirds usually experience very poor nestling survival
>during cold springs due to lack of insect hatches.

It was precisely this aspect of the effect of this year's extreme weather in
relation to the local back-up of montane species at sea level in the Fraser
Valley which inspired me a couple of weeks ago to post a number of queries
about how to recognise failed-breeder southbound migration of affected
species, or what evolved response(s) they might have to such extreme
conditions, such as nesting in unconventional habitat, and so on. I guess
they must have been lost in the catfighting and hairpulling because there
was no reponse to any of them, even though they were bird-related and
on-topic. But Jack's remark is comforting proof that someone else is aware
of this issue and thinking over some of the possible consequences of
Winter99: The Winter That Will Not Die, and the effects it will have on many
birds in this part of the west.

>Oh, and for the
>record, Whitehorse, Yukon (lat N 61 deg) is *south* of the Arctic
>Circle (lat N 66.6 deg).

Thanks for the correction, Jack! Now, if I could only remember how to spell
'Tsawwassen', I could really ace my geography test.... '-)

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net