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So how bad a May Long is this?

Friday, May. 17, 2013 at 9:05 AM

I have been hearing a lot of griping lately, that the forecast for May Long weekend calls for too much rain.

On the other hand, I'm hearing a lot of Crankshaft-level cynicism from people who throw up their hands and say, "It ALWAYS rains on May Long."
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It couldn't always rain on May Long, right? I mean, there have been plenty of nice May days — surely we've had a few good May Long weekends.

But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't really turn one up.

So, I turned to the source: Environment Canada's historical data.

Now, the data aren't perfect, but there's a fair bit of it there. I decided to consider Friday part of the long weekend, and check for the last time that we had four nice days strung together, with no rain and pleasant temperatures.

I thought I'd find something in at least the past decade.

But I was wrong.

I had to go back to 1991 before I found an unambiguously nice full four-day May Long.

Yikes!

There are a few May Longs where two of the days are nice enough, but then it pours rain on a third day. Or it's cold for two days before giving us a glorious holiday Monday.

But there are far more where the weather is just wretched.

I looked at every May Long between 1990 and 2012, and I included the forecast for this weekend, and then I crunched some averages. In total, I looked at 24 May Long weekends (which I thought was appropriate. In that nearly a quarter century, I discovered that a typical May Long Weekend sees:
- a daytime high of 22 C on its nicest day
- an overnight low of 1.4 C on its coldest day
- either two or three days with at least some rain
- about 11 mm of rain total over the weekend
We've had overnight frost a total of nine times — that same number of times that we've failed to reach 20 C on any of the four days (not always the same year). Only twice in that time have we managed to go the full Friday-through-Monday without any rain at all.

Once was in 2006 — but you wouldn't have liked it, with a 12 C Saturday afternoon and 14 C on Sunday.

The other all-dry weekend was in 2002 — but that one was even worse, with a weekend high of 19.5 C and an overnight low of -7.6 C (the coldest May Long night I found).

Five times, we've had more than 20 mm of rain over the weekend. Twice, we recorded snow (both times about a centimeter and a half) — once in 1997, and again in 2004.

The best May Long in those 24 years was 1991. The Friday was the coolest day, when it reached 18.5 C, but the weekend proper was a couple of days in the low 20s followed by 27 C on the holiday Monday. It wasn't too windy, but there was a nice breeze, and there was only trace precipitation on the Monday.

The year after, in 1992, was the biggest May Long swing I saw — Friday was a cold 9 C, but it was 31 C on Monday (the warmest long weekend day of the 24 years I looked at).

Frankly, there's not too much to suggest that the 2013 May Long will be unusual in the least. If anything, it's a little warmer than normal, especially overnight. And unless we get a torrential downpour, it won't be something we haven't seen a dozen times before.

Enjoy.

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Crunching some WestJet numbers

Wednesday, May. 15, 2013 at 11:12 AM

Now that I'm officially booked into the very first WestJet Encore flight from YBR > YYC (that's airline talk for Brandon to Calgary), I've been soliciting ideas on what to do for the 18 hours that my girlfriend and I are in the city.

We've had plenty — including some great ones from the Calgary mayor's communications director. And I recently got a shout out from Tourism Calgary, asking the city on my behalf how best to spend my time.

But while I continue to solicit your ideas, my brain got derailed by a great bit of vintage memorabilia that my friend Matt posted on my Facebook page last night:

There's Brandon — a stop on the old milk run from Calgary to Toronto (via Thunder Bay as well as Brandon).

This was before airline deregulation. Remember, the fact that there hasn't been air service in Brandon for the past quarter-century is because the free market, kids. It's as ruthless as it is efficient.

Anyway, I ferretted out the origin of the route map, which turned out to be on the wonderful DepartedFlights.com, where I could probably drool over logos for the next four hours.

Through the drool, I tracked down the Pacific Western timetable from the same date. I was curious how the new WestJet service compared to what we used to have. Turns out to be similar in some ways, but different in others. It's a six-day-a-week schedule, for example (no Saturday service) where WestJet has a seven-day-a-week plan. Here's the Brandon schedule from 1985:

You'll see that the Brandon to Calgary flights take off every night at 6:55 p.m. and arrive in Calgary at 7:33 p.m. That's a flight time of about an hour and a half, once you factor in the time change, so WestJet's new turboprops are a little bit slower, with their two-hour-and-15-minute flights, than the old jets.

On the return leg, Calgary to Brandon, flights leave Calgary at 10:35 a.m. and arrive back home at 1:05 p.m. That's, again, a bit faster than the turboprops.

Interestingly, the Pacific Western flight from Calgary to Brandon is about the same schedule as WestJet's. The new flights leave Calgary a little earlier (9:50 a.m.) and arrive at about the same time (12:50 p.m.) but it's the same basic idea.

The PW jets, however, would continue on to Thunder Bay and then to Toronto before turning around and coming back. WestJet — although there's speculation they will eventually follow that same route — turn around in Brandon and head right back to Calgary.

These days, it's not an evening flight to Calgary but an early afternoon one. I'll be hopping on my WestJet flight at 1:20 p.m. and arriving at 2:35 p.m. Yup, that's about the same as driving to Winnipeg.

Annoyingly, I'm required to be at the airport —McGill Field — some 90 minutes (!) before the actual flight.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that that is some sort of ridiculous Transport Canada or CATSA requirement, because I can't believe it'll take even a jam-packed plane of 78 passengers a full hour and a half to navigate the Brandon terminal and security. Hell, we'll be there a full hour before the plane gets in!

Setting aside that singular frustration, the timetable also shows off one other difference between the old, regulated days of air travel and today — the price.

It's listed right there! On the printed scheduled! It was $175 for the Brandon-Calgary leg, which means $350 for the round trip. I'm going to presume that there weren't any taxes, or mandatory fees, or fuel surcharges, or airport improvements, so what you see is what you paid.

It didn't change day-to-day or hour-to-hour. There weren't five fare tiers or "economy plus" seating. You paid your ticket, you got your seat — they fed you a meal!

But about that ticket.

I paid just over $300 for a return ticket from Brandon to Calgary. It was $350 for the same in 1985. So it's $50 cheaper right off the bat.

But then I plugged that number into the Bank of Canada's handy Inflation Calculator …

Your 1985 ticket would be worth $691.56 in 2013 dollars.

Wow. That's more than I paid for TWO tickets on the inaugural flight.

So to recap:
- The old Pacific Western flights were faster, priced the same across the board, included meals and probably had roomier seats than airlines these days. Oh, and I'd bet you were able to walk up to the airport terminal 15 minutes before your flight instead of 90.
- The new WestJet flights are cheaper. Boy, are they cheaper.
Anyone who's worrying that there won't be enough people to fill the planes since they couldn't make a go of it in the '80s should keep a few numbers in mind — the planes are smaller, so they won't need as many to fill every seat; Brandon has grown by more than a third since the mid-80s; and WestJet flights are half the cost of the old service.

So all WestJet needs to do is sell less of something to a larger market for half price.

Sounds like a winning formula to me.

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I'm going to Calgary!

Tuesday, May. 14, 2013 at 4:09 PM

On Monday, WestJet announced that they would add Brandon to their list of Encore destinations — flying here once a day from Calgary in the morning and returning in the early afternoon.

On Tuesday, I bought a ticket.

In fact, two tickets. My girlfriend and I will be among the first in line on Sept. 3, ready to hop on board the brand-new 78-seater turboprops for the inaugural two-hour flight to Calgary.

We'll arrive in Cowtown at about 2:30 in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the day there — shopping, dining, maybe taking in a show — and we'll be flying back first thing the next day.

I'll be "reviewing" the flight for the paper, but it's also a great excuse for an overnight getaway.

It feels vaguely ridiculous to head all the way to Calgary just for the night — but that's old-Brandon feeling. Calgary is now two hours away. In terms of time, it's the same as heading to Winnipeg.

Sure, it's a bit pricier (about $300 for a return flight, for each of us) than a drive to Winnipeg, but have you seen gas prices recently? It's not outrageously more expensive. And it's probably cheaper than driving to Calgary.

Only the fact that I had to clear it with my girlfriend first, and make sure that she could get the time off work, prevented me from pulling the trigger and buying a ticket first thing yesterday, as soon as the Brandon booking went live.

Today, of course, WestJet also announced a 72-hour seat sale, and their website was slammed. I spent a couple of hours, off and on, trying to get through on the website before giving up and calling their toll-free line.

Despite the warning that expected hold time was close to an hour — WOW, that really is a popular seat sale! — I was able to speak with an agent named Dawn in less than 25 minutes.

She was great. A few minutes later, I was all signed up with a WestJet Rewards number, and I'd booked and paid for a quick jaunt to Calgary.

I'm more excited than I thought I would be to have a seat on that first-ever flight out of Brandon.

But now the question becomes — what to do in Calgary? We've basically got half a day, since we land at about 2:30 p.m. and will have to be at the airport bright and early the next morning for a flight home.

Where should we stay? Somewhere cool and close to the action (whatever action we choose to find)? Or close to the airport, and cab it back at night?

What should we do? I'm afraid that it's been a long time since I was in Calgary. Where are the cool neighbourhoods. What're the best hangouts? Anyone got a good tip on restaurants or pubs?

It's a little too early for the events websites to have much in the way for that day, but I'll keep checking.

Got any ideas? Tweet me @Gramiq or comment below.

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