More Things You'd Probably Only See in Alberta

Cops in cowboy hats.


Line dancing flash mobs.




Clinton Kelly from What Not to Wear wearing what not to wear.

Things You Wouldn't See in BC

I decided to do a little studying and suntanning in the back yard last Sunday since it was such a nice day. I started to get really hot, so I headed over to the shop to grab a beer and on the way back to the deck, much to my surprise, there was a buffalo head sitting in our backyard stairing back at me.



Not just any buffalo head....one that was half face and half skull. I wasn't sure if someone had left it there as a warning, or even worse, if someone that I live with brought this thing home as a decoration!

The latter was true. Only in Alberta!



Last Thursday, on my way to school (which is right downtown) I was surprised to find these little critters. I've never seen a goper in real life before.


They were so cute and there were like 20 of them on the side of this hill right beside my school.



This might look like an ad out of a newspaper from the 1940's, but it was actually in Friday's Metro.

Perogy Pinch

We went over to G's Aunt & Uncle's for a perogy pinch.



Their new kitchen was turned into a crazy perogy making sweatshop that resulted in a delicious feast and lots of perogies to take home!



We had 8-10 people working for about 4 hours in an assembly line.






Randy and RT watching the show and probably hoping we might drop some bacon.



Mmmmmmm!!!

Chinooks

This is the beautiful view from G's Aunt & Uncle's farm in Cochrane along with a little lesson in weather courtesy of Wikipedia.



Chinook winds commonly refer to foehn winds in the interior West of North America, where the Canadian Prairies and the Great Plains meet various mountain ranges.


The Chinook is a rain shadow wind which results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air which has dropped most of its moisture on windward slopes (orographic lift). As a consequence of the different adiabatic rates of moist and dry air, the air on the leeward slopes becomes warmer than equivalent elevations on the windward slopes.




A strong Chinook can make snow one foot deep almost vanish in one day. The snow partly melts and partly evaporates in the dry wind. Chinook winds have been observed to raise winter temperature, often from below −20°C (−4°F) to as high as 10°C to 20°C (50°F to 68°F) for a few hours or days, then temperatures plummet to their base levels.



Two common cloud patterns seen during this time are a chinook arch overhead and/or a bank of clouds (also referred to as a cloud wall) obscuring the mountains to the west. It appears to be an approaching storm, but does not advance any further east.

One of the most striking features of the chinook is the chinook arch, which is a band of stationary stratus clouds caused by air rippling over the mountains due to orographic lifting. To those unfamiliar with the chinook, the chinook arch may look like a threatening storm cloud at times. However, they rarely produce rain or snow. They can also create stunning sunrises and sunsets.