Kids jump in the pool and bike around at the KOA campground in Upper Sackville, N.S., enjoying the beautiful summer day.
But, so far, few days have been like that.
“The weather it’s just been crazy,” says Joseph Idy, the campground’s co-owner. “People change their plans, they go a different direction. The floods, the fires, it’s just been crazy weather.”
While local travelers can make other plans, that’s not always the case for travelers.
“Coming out of COVID, last year was our first great year,” he says. “And this year, we’re not even close to last year. Last night, we had 10 sites empty and that’s unheard of. It’s August. We should be saying ‘no, you can’t come in,’ turning people away.”
Bobby-Jo Gore, a local camper, says the weather has been concerning.
“I haven’t seen weather like this living here my entire life,” she says. “It’s been one extreme to the next and it’s honestly pretty scary.”
It’s difficult to explain to her kids what’s been happening, she says, because “you don’t know what to make of it yourself.”
The wacky weather season has presented challenges for baseball.
A two-week shutdown was required for all players in the Hammonds Plains area due to the wildfires. And June is usually a write-off due to rain, says Holly LaPierre, the president of the Hammonds Plains Minor Baseball Association.
“But to have it stretch into July and August and certainly then, throw the flood on top of it, I would say that we’re looking at thousands of games that have had to be cancelled and to try to reschedule.”
Rescheduling with what she describes as a field shortage makes things even more chaotic, leaving lots of work for the association when it pours.
“There’s not a lot of electricity at a lot of those fields so we do use hand pumps and a bicyle pump and drain the water and dump it off to the side and then rake it and just pray for sunshine,” she says. “It’s exhausting for us that run it, we are all volunteers — none of us get paid to do this — and… you’re every day watching the radar, seeing that rain coming, and not just a shower; it’s torrential downpour.”
Back at the campground, despite losing thousands of dollars from last month’s flooding, it’s still an honest outlook.
“There’s nothing we can do about the weather, it’s mother nature,” Idy says.
He knows it could be much worse.
“It’s money,” he says. “People lost their houses, there were lives lost.”