For some festival attendees, the rain on the plains is hardly a pain

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2017 (3124 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gumboots and umbrellas, not parkas and fur hats, were the sensible gear at Winnipeg’s Festival du Voyageur on a rainy holiday Monday.

A steady stream of people — many with young children in tow — wore ice off most of the wet sidewalks leading to Festival central, Fort Gibraltar in St. Boniface, with many of them first taking in a pilgrimage to St. Boniface Museum on Tache Avenue before walking the half dozen blocks to the old fort.

It was a typical Louis Riel holiday, the annual day that pays tribute to Manitoba’s Métis leader.

Parked cars lined side streets from Tache Avenue at Provencher Boulevard north to the old Northwest Company fur trade fort.

Festival volunteers in colourful blanket coats kept the fort’s parking lot from spilling over, visitors cued up for beaver tails topped with salted caramel and woodsmoke scented the air.

The only thing out of character was the weather. Even so, Winnipeg didn’t set any records for rain or mild temperatures, Environment Canada reported.

“In Winnipeg it’s been 1 C pretty well all day, with light rain showers,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Greg Pearce.

Winnipeg turned the tables on daytime highs and lows Monday. The high today occurred just after midnight when it was 5 C.

“It’s weird because what happened last night in Winnipeg — it was warm. It was, let me see, 5 C in Winnipeg, like early, early in the morning, around midnight. But temperatures have been going down most of the day. It’s been near plus one most of the daylight hours,” Pearce noted.

The record high for Feb. 20 was 6.1 C, set in 1930.

“It’s not a record but it’s close,” Pearce said.

Various local meteorology sites put rainfall at about three to four millimetres. That’s less than a quarter-inch of rain.

Local weather sites, meanwhile, were monitoring the warm spell with interest.

Robsobs.ca, for instance, is linked to a Twitter feed of the same name for local weather.

“I use social media to relay information that I find interesting, and, yeah, it’s my personal account,” said meteorologist Rob Paola.

By day, Paola is a meteorologist with Environment Canada. But his personal posts are his own and have nothing to do with his day job.

“I’m really interested in stories about things like the blizzard of ’66, the blizzard of ’86 or what the hottest temperature ever was in Winnipeg. And not only the present weather but historical weather and things like Twitter and I have a blog… People seem to appreciate it,” Paola said. “That’s why I do it.”

There were no records in Winnipeg on Louis Riel Day that Paola spotted.

A light steady drizzle didn’t keep crowds away from the winter festival.

In fact, unseasonably mild weather was an attraction for some.

“You know what? I’ve lived in Winnipeg for 20 years and I’ve never come. This is the first year,” said Gwen D’Ottavio. “It’s the nice weather.”

Others, who come year after year, brought out their relatives and acted as tour guides, leading them through Fort Gibraltar and the fur trade re-enactments that breathe life into the 18th and 19th centuries on the Red River for a few days every winter.

A thick layer of sawdust covered the ice inside the jack pine palisade that rings the festival grounds outside the fort.

The sawdust kept the melt from turning the ground into a muddy quagmire, but it couldn’t save the snow sculptures.

“I feel so bad for all the sculptures. They’re all gone,” Deborah Malyk sighed.

The sentinel snow goose sculpture at the entry gates was a big wall of snow.

Ginette Lavack Walters, executive director of Festival du Voyageur, said in an email the damaged sculptures were unlikely to be repaired.

“We do not have plans to repair the sculptures. There is no snow with which to repair them or the time,” Lavack Walters wrote.

“There were originally eight sculptures as part of the international symposium and only one is still standing.”

Chainsaw wood carvings at festival drew dozens of people. Paul and Jacob Frenette brought a northern lake scene with pickerel, pike and tall weedy reeds to life in the open air. The Frenette father-son pair host a chainsaw art program — Carver Kings on HGTV.

Typically, Winnipeg experiences three predictable thaws between Christmas and March. The first falls between Christmas and New Years; the second at the end of January, called the Bonspiel Thaw and the third in February, called the Festival Thaw.

“Never,” said Dale Phillips, asked if he’d seen weather this mild. “I’ve been coming here since 1970. I won’t miss it. This year a friend of ours, he was here yesterday and he said if you’re going, you’d better wear your gumboots,” Phillips said.

The annual winter festival was founded in 1970 and it draws thousands of visitors. This year, it runs from Feb. 17 to 26.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca