Typhoon remnants mostly don't live up to hype

Expected strong storm a dud The remnants of Typhoon Songda were supposed to bring heavy winds Saturday night, but it proved to be underwhelming.

It’s not like nothing happened.

There was more wind, more rain, more downed trees and more power outages, but the third storm of the week - widely predicted to be the most severe - didn’t exactly live up to its billing.

The remnants of typhoon Songda were supposed to bring gusts of more than 100 kilometres per hour to Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, and the Fraser Valley, but in most places they were nowhere near that high.

At Vancouver International Airport, the top recorded gust was 63 km/h. At Victoria’s airport it was 69. At Abbotsford’s it was 59.

During the day on Saturday, strong winds and rains prompted ferry cancellations on four routes between Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, and the Gulf Islands. The Vancouver Park Board ordered Stanley Park closed at 8 p.m.

But while the storm was expected to intensify overnight and into the early hours of Sunday morning, it mostly did the opposite.

By 11:15 p.m., wind warnings had been lifted and Stanley Park was reopened:

There were some noticeable effects from storm number three, of course. The Pollock family watched a transformer explode outside the kitchen window of their North Vancouver home.

“It was pretty cool, but at the same time, it was pretty scary because it was huge sparks just flying everywhere,” said West Pollock.

West’s father Tim said the family was prepared for the storm, and had weathered the previous two without much trouble. For them, despite not being as bad as forecasted, Saturday’s storm was the most unpleasant of the three.

“Actually, it hasn’t been so bad until tonight,” Tim Pollock said. “We lost the power this afternoon, and it’s been off all day.”