First Snow Storm of the Year

The first real snowstorm of the year rolled through without much warming last night. As expected the MRDC cameras got shots of the snowplows.





I really like the tandem snow plow shot from Mill Cove but what is that object behind the lead plow?

In any event for the most part the cameras worked as expected but MRDC lost Salisbury and the Bridge camera and Moncton lost a camera. This is what the province looked like this afternoon.

Speaking of New Web Cameras in New Brunswick

Speaking of new web cameras in New Brunswick there is a camera that I have not listed in the past because whenever I checked it the camera was offline. I just had a look and I see that there is now an active online image from the camera of the ski slope at Crab Mountain. Should be interesting when we get some snow. So Crab Mountain ... Saaaaluute!


Click on image to go to link.

This image reminds me of when I was dating a girl that just moved from British Columbia and all she could talk about was how much she missed skiing in the mountains. On and on it went all summer and then I said that we had a ski hill near Fredericton. I drove her up to Silverwood and the scene was somewhat similar to this view of Crab Mountain. She cried all the way home.

About those MRDC Webcameras ...

If you look at these images from the MRDC webcamera this morning for Longs Creek you may notice some similarities ...

It looks to me like the camera is firing when an object is in the center of the field of view. Not only that look at the image times and intervals
9:04
9:35 (31 minutes)
9:51 (16 minutes)
10:06 (15 minutes)
10:36 (30 minutes)
10:51 (15 minutes)
11:07 (16 minutes)
11:38 (31 minutes)
11:53 (15 minutes)
Not exactly machine like interval times which suggests that the image is event driven.

Now that is an interesting addition to the camera and I do not know if that provides useful information for the person looking for information on driving conditions. It does however make the images more interesting. I am guessing we will see lots of images of snowplows this winter.

As for the new MRDC cameras I gotta say that while new cameras are a good thing twitchy new cameras is a bit aggravating. The Dubee and Magnetic Hill cameras have frozen and the Magnetic Hill camera has already been taken offline.

While I am on the blog I gotta say that the people in Beaver Harbour have once again changed the field of view for their webcamera. It has a better view of the harbour and promises to be interesting if it stays on this line through the winter.

Something to Cheer About

So this blog has been inactive for about a year but there are some hits from people looking for links to webcameras in New Brunswick. I figured I would step in and update the links so that the blog at least retained some utility.

In terms of web cameras in NB there have been some significant changes.

This past summer Fredericton had a webcamera mounted in a city bus that gave some significant real time street action when it was working but it was inconsistent and slow to update and they stopped the camera this past fall.The webcamera at the Forestry center in Fredericton was having problems a while ago and was getting fuzzy with poor colouring and finally it went dark and has not been fixed.While we are talking about Fredericton web cameras I guess we should mention the passing of the Fire Station camera which is natural since the station is completed and I was keeping an eye on the camera to see if I could catch a truck on the way out. It never happened.In terms of new web cameras I see that Crandall University have a web camera set up with a view of their construction site. Click on the image to go to the flash image.
The real news is that actual highway cameras have been renewed and added. The MRDC cameras have been down for a while and they were four excellent quality images so they were missed. The MRDC cameras came back yesterday and three more cameras have been added at Dubee, Mill Cove and Magnetic Hill. The cameras are not as good as before and I am hoping that they will send someone out to fix the field of view on some that do not show the road surface clearly at all. They have set the cameras up so that they are like the Brunway cameras with a 24 hour library of images stored which is nice.

And this is what the province looked like today as viewed by the highway cameras ...

The System Works

So today a simple winter snowstorm came through New Brunswick. It was clear this morning and the sky lowered and dumped about 15 cm of snow on the province. The key I think was that the humidity and temperature were both low and the snow was not sticking or melting. This meant that the cameras had a chance to collect images without snow or ice accumulation.

That meant that the cameras could be used as a reasonably accurate and current indication of both local weather and road conditions. The images at supper time were clear and useful like this one ...

From HWY171208

And this one ...

From HWY171208

The only problems I saw were The Cope Loop Road ...

From HWY171208

and Moncton - Dieppe

From HWY171208

So the system worked pretty much the way it was supposed to. And this is what the rest of the province looked like at suppertime.

What a Difference a Day Makes

From HWY081208

The storm was not as bad as expected, the worst was in the middle of the province near Fredericton. The snow came down wet and then the temperature dropped meaning that the snow froze. That made the roads trecherous.

The light was good this afternoon and the cameras were picking up details you don't normally see like the sea smoke in the harbour at Saint John.

From HWY081208

Or the river in behind the church in Durham Bridge.

From HWY081208

All in all the small amount of snow did make the province look "better". A couple of web cameras are down or obscured by the snow but it was not as bad as last time.

And this is what the rest of the province looked like:

A Quiet Waiting

From HWY051208

It seems that the province is quietly waiting for winter to come. We had our Remembrance Day storm and the snow from that system still lingers in many parts of the province.

From HWY051208

Some more than others.

From HWY051208

All in all the province has had a pretty mild fortnight since the last significant snow and the accumulated snow has pretty much melted away. That said, the province is expected to get a snow storm this weekend even though the extended forecast for this winter is mild and wet. We shall see.

Moncton continues to have its cameras blink off and on and are sticking to the dynamic image. MRDC Salisbury went fuzzy after the last snow storm and never came back to a crisp image. The traffic cameras proved to be less than totally useful in the last snow storm with the image lost to accumulated snow for many of the cameras. If the purpose of these cameras is to inform the travelling public what the current conditions are you would think that the cameras would be located with the following criteria:
1) accessible for maintenance (and the assumption of maintenance)
2) unobstructed view of the roadway
3) field of view such that an extended view of the roadway from near to far is observed.
4) orientation so that the rising or setting sun does not obscure the image
5) reasonably rapid change in image to reflect current conditions.

And yet many of the cameras seem to violate these simple ideals.

This is what the province looked like today: