Weird weather isn't new

This year, as my family grew tired of seeing the same Group of Seven landscapes year in and year out, I made a change.

On New Year's Day, I put up a weather calendar published by Firefly Books. This one provides us with with a year's worth of amazing photographs: forked lightning, the northern lights, lake waves frozen into icicles, and gorgeous clouds and rainbows. Even better, every single day has facts about weird weather of the past.

For example, in 1936, Ontario experienced a killing two-week heat wave, with a sustained record temperature of 44 Celsius. It was so hot that steel rails and bridge girders twisted and fruit baked on the trees. The following year Saskatchewan beat that record when the towns of Midale and Yellowgrass both registered 45 degrees Celsius. That was long before the roads were crowded with hydrocarbon-burning vehicles, too.

I'd heard that Snag, Yukon reached -63 Celsius in February 1947 -- the record for cold in Canada. But not by a large margin. In 1911, the temperature in Fort Vermilion, Alberta plunged to -61.1.

The calendar provides plenty more food for thought. Saint John's, Newfoundland, the wettest, windiest, and snowiest city in Canada, also enjoys 124 days of fog per year. The above picture was taken on Signal Hill in August.

The "Great Hurricane" that roared through the Caribbean in 1780 killed 22,000 on the islands of Martinique, Barbados and St. Eustatius.

In 1800, Savannah, Georgia, which now enjoys an average annual temperature of 66 degrees Fahrenheit (18.9 C), had a heavy snowfall: eighteen inches.

In London in 1890, there was not a single hour of sunshine for the entire month of December. Also in London, the worst of the infamous pea souper fogs killed 4000 in 1952. It took another four years to pass legislation forcing clean-air reforms. Meanwhile, 1953 brought devastating surges that flooded the UK and the Netherlands, killing another 2000 people.

Without doubt, the past forty years have continued a longstanding series of weird weather events, arguably more frequent and often more intense:

In 1979, Cyclone Kerry claimed the record for the world's widest cyclone eye. It was measured by a reconnaissance craft at 93 km. The relatively small eye of any hurricane, of course, is surrounded by a much larger storm.

In 1989 in Pelly Bay, Northwest Territories, the problem was not global warming, but wind chill. While the mercury read only -51 Celsius, the wind chill dropped that to -91.

In 1999, Tahtsa, British Columbia broke the Canadian record for a single day's snowfall when 145 cm fell on the little northern town.

In the fall of 2009, while Venezuela seeded clouds to combat a desperate drought, severe floods struck India and Saudi Arabia. Mudslides killed 124 in El Salvador in November, and by mid-December, New Orleans had recorded record rainfall for the month.

Indeed, I am hit with a veritable blizzard of weather facts whenever I glance at the new calendar.

The ones I'd like to close with concern rainbows and moonbows. Rainbows are curved because the raindrops that refract the light are round and curved. Moonbows, though rare, can sometimes be seen at night during rain showers when the moon is full. I'd love to see one. Maybe they'll become more frequent too.