Living where I do, in Coal Harbour in downtown Vancouver, BC --- I had a front row seat for tonight's storm that hit Vancouver. I was up late as I couldn't sleep due to my fight with a viral infection that I have - but I had drifted off for awhile. At around 3am though, I was awakened by the harsh wind that was beating our building.

Luckily my Mom had moved in a lot of our pots, close to the building on our deck - as the wind was whipping around the corner of our building at an unbelievable rate. You could see the water of the bay moving violently - it was so harsh that there were no whitecaps, the water just moved with a very violent ripple effect. It was eerie.

Even the chandelier in our dining room was swaying side to side.

Eerie indeed.

What I thought was lightening was actually power generators exploding. Looking at the north shore, it's like someone took a cloth and wiped out specific areas of lights - leaving patches of darkness in the wake of the wipe.

Luckily, I don't have to go to work today, due to my infection. The skytrain is down, the traffic is nuts. My only major complaint is the rather poor coverage the storm is getting on TV. Turning on the TV, a number of Seattle stations were broadcasting at 4am. None of the Canadian equivalents were broadcasting until after 5:30am.

Luckily CampusKiss NW AM 980 was going strong. They had cut from the regular "Best of Bill Good" that plays at 4am and they were taking live calls with people talking about how the storm was affecting their area.

So crazy.

I just made myself some porridge, and some hot tea, to soothe my throat. The wind has now died down and I'll work on my website a bit before getting some more sleep.

- Steve