The Unpublished Issues

Online Versions Of This And Past Issues

(Choose the year and then the date for the online issue you want)

Issue #1108

Perseid meteor shower…..

This past weekend was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, that yearly event where under good viewing conditions and with a bit of luck you can see lots of meteors in the night sky. I’ve tried many times over the years to see these showers but have had very little luck. Some years it is overcast, other times there was simply no way of getting out in the middle of the night and so on. This year we had cloudless sky's but they were milky due to the forest fire smoke and heat induced particles in the air. I went out onto the back deck about 1:30am but because of that milky sky only the brightest of the stars were visible and therefore it was not at all the best viewing conditions. I managed to see 2 or 3 meteors but that was all. Had the sky been crystal dark it would probably have been quite spectacular but again I’ve struck out. Oh well.

I remember making a determined effort to see this particular shower many years ago when we lived on Hidden Valley. Ryan and I and my dad all piled into my pickup truck and headed out to a rural viewpoint that looked over the Grand River and country side somewhere up north of Winterbourn. We had lawn chairs for sitting in the back of the truck as well as some blankets to keep us warm. We sat there from about midnight until about 3am and never saw a single meteor. That was rather disappointing to say the least. I think the bottom line is, any clear night is as good as any other clear night. It’s all a game of chance.

Heat wave…..

As the whole world knows, BC and the Yukon have been scorched by heat and drought for a lone time now. It has been dangerously hot and dry since the winter rains ended and it had been hot and dry last year. Our current heat wave is forecasted to end this weekend but start right back up again next week, with still no rain in sight.

One of the sad side-effects of the dry and hot is the fact that there are almost no insects around. No flies, no bees (that’s a very bad thing). Virtually no insects. The exception is the wasps and hornets etc. They like hot and dry but they are not the pollinators. So, we are all in deep doo-doo.

doug

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This series of ‘unpublished’ issues is my way of keeping track of what I’ve been up to during the summer when we are not sending out the normal Squamidian. No one knows about these issues but that’s ok. This also keeps the issue number in sync with the passing weeks.