Canadians seem fixated on the weather. It is so much a part of our lives, because we live in a geography of atmospheric extremes, particularly in some parts of the country. Ottawa, the nation's capital, is the second-coldest, snowiest capital of the world. Hardiness is expected of people who live here, to endure extreme cold temperatures, high incidences of fierce snow storms, ice storms,deadly fog conditions.

In the summer we slog through extremely humid and hot conditions. And this spring has been phenomenally wet. Making it difficult for farmers to get out in their fields and even begin to sow the early crops they normally plant. For city dwellers there are other problems. We've received an inordinate amount of rain and for those low-lying areas and those without newer, upgraded sewage systems to carry away the excess, there is always danger of flooding. The city's sewer infrastructure was installed before the population became so dense, with its concomitant stress, and untreated sewage is known on a number of occasions to have spilled directly into our main water resource. The city's beaches are often closed to public swimming because of the danger to human health with the elevated levels of e.coli bacterium.

In the past few days a series of monsoon-like rain systems have passed through the area. We've experienced rolling thunderstorms, one after another, dumping sheets of rain over the landscape. The thunder and lightning have been spectacular, representing displays of nature's intemperate power. Lightning strikes hydro poles and out goes the power. It strikes homes and fires result. And the incessant rain, in its tropical plenty has soaked the ground beyond its ability to absorb any more. The result has been hundreds of calls from desperate home-owners to emergency services, because of flooded basements.

There have been street closures because the water has flooded to such a height that traffic cannot proceed. And there have been evacuations of entire streets until the flooding has sufficiently subsided to assure municipal authorities that there is little danger presented to the homeowners, before they're permitted to return to their damaged homes.

A small tornado passed through the area, part of what is called a "supercell" storm. Apart from which winds, during some of these storms reached between 60- and 110- kilometres an hour.

As for us, we were startled, yesterday, when we took advantage of a lull in the rain to venture out into our nearby ravine, to discover that one of the highest banks of the flooded creek, running alongside one of the major ravine trails, had collapsed into the creek taking all manner of trees with it. Leaving the trail half its width where before there had been a considerable space beyond the trail where the bank edged out over the creek.

The creek itself can no longer run unimpeded because of dams created by detritus containing old logs, twigs, branches and who knows what else, having been swept along by the flooded creek, (tumbling down the hillsides, from the canopy above due to the pressure of the high winds and the pounding rain) and ending up jammed and stuffed at bends in the creek and by the struts from the bridges over the creek.

What is left of the trail looks vulnerable to further collapse; a large, elongated crack can be seen in the now-narrow trail's clay-and-sand-augmented-with-gravel base; best to avoid it entirely. Which means taking alternate, somewhat inconvenient, and truncated trails. What can be done eventually to ameliorate the situation is anyone's guess.