You guys complaining about the weather, sissies!
...It's been so bad up here this year (how's that for an intro to a weather rant?).
Seriously, over the past 4 weeks I have had no electricity for 8 days. It hasn't been cold in BC (at least not in my corner of it - I've only had about 4 days of frost so far) but it has been windy. There's a stretch of road along the coast about 3 km from my house and over a 2 km stretch I counted 30 broken power poles. Amazing. Some of the poles were new last summer but when the 200 foot tall spruce or fir trees were hitting the lines the poles were like match sticks. Our house was shaking in the wind - I have NEVER experienced a storm like that and I've lived on the North Pacific my whole life.
Also, in Vancouver there's a Canadian National Heritage Site - Stanley Park. It's this huge old growth forest in downtown Vancouver - about 600 acres I think - and the estimates to CLEAN UP the park are about $4M. Word is that about 1000 trees fell and some of the root balls that were pulled up are over 20 feet in diameter. These are trees that until last month had been standing for over 500 years.
Scary stuff, man.
Have you checked out the Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth? It's worth renting.