Snow in August

I headed back out to the cottage on Friday August 21st.  I picked up a bunch of electrical materials, and some other supplies, before heading out of town.  

There is a real shortage of many commodities and in particular building materials are affected.  Lumber prices are at record highs and there are shortages of all sorts of things including pipe, windows, furnaces and electrical materials.  I placed an order with a wholesaler for all the electrical materials that I need for the guest cottage.  Much of it is on backorder, some of it for up to three or four months.  I was not able to get a ground plate, a meter base, the main panel, some of the breakers and most of the wire.  I picked up what was available, but won't be able to do much in the way of installation in the short term.  These shortages are all blamed on Covid.  Manufacturing plants have been working at reduced capacity for months, and there is high demand, both because people have lots of money [from the government Covid subsidies] and because a lot of people are building and renovating.

None of the girls wanted to come out this time, so it was a solo trip for me.  I stopped in Rimbey on my way out and picked up a few groceries and made it out to the cottage by mid-afternoon.

On Saturday the weather was a little unsettled.  It was cool and partly overcast and there were a couple of light showers.  Overnight on Saturday in to Sunday it started to rain more significantly.  On Sunday August 23rd it rained all day long and we got a total accumulation of 33mm.  Overnight the temperature got down to near freezing and there was some wet snow mixed in with the rain on Sunday morning.  On Monday morning I woke up to a heavy fog.  Once it evenutally burned off and the skies cleared there was snow on all of the mountain tops.  To the west the Bighorn Range was totally white.  But even the peaks of the front ranges... Coliseum, Baldy and Eagle, all had a covering of fresh snow.