Yes it could have been el Nina.  Certainly it was a challenge to get around.  It is just as easy in my opinion to let time and suitable weather do the composting  work for me, because I have a fairly spacious yard for setting up composters.  To a great extent  compost microbes provide their own heat.   Weather records for Edmonton have been compiled since 1880 and this past winter was the eighth largest amount of snow besides being the most in  78 years.  In 1994 I did a fortnight retreat at a Soto Zen Monastery in California, and when they weeded their vegetable fields and grounds, they had a separate compost heap for noxious weeds.  It is true that most  weeds will not reassert themselves because of the heat generated by composting, and also the  little  that does have the temerity to poke above the soil can be turned under again.  You need to keep at it, where weeds are concerned. 

The Ford Motor company is doing research on extracting latex economically from dandelion roots.  Also a ubiquitous weed in Canada called stinkweed is being  grown experimentally  on poor soil in northern Alberta for the the potential use of its seeds as a source of bio fuel  which can be produced on land not suitable for either  grazing pasture or food production.  "A weed is a flower nobody picks".  I have thought of uploading a picture of myself snowshoeing back from the compost pile.

I have heard that some people  manage to  have a continuous  flow  system of composting such that what they remove from the bottom is older and ready to use, but I am not certain that is a workable scheme.  Better to do rotating batches as they are ready.

hi there Karma_yeshe_dorje

Thus have I heard:

A meat thermometer can be inserted into a compost heap to determine  the internal temperature.  I wouldnt  turn a compost heap mere frequently than once a week  because the heat would dissipate resulting in more chance of weed seeds surviving the process, but of course you need aeration too. It is a trade-off. 

The idea of destroying weeds by rotting them in a barrel full of water (submerged) I got  from a book  entitled "no work garden" by an Englishman named bob flowerdew.  ISBN 1-55285-440-X .The author claims the Romans used this method to deal  with weeds.  The edition I have was published  by Whitecap publishers in Vancouver,  British Columbia, but was printed in Singapore.  The author's gardening books are published around the world in various languages.

A nut fell off the end of my tumbler's axle. And so the tumbler collapsed! I'm trying to bury compost from it. So I've been digging up clay around basket grass in the nature strip.

I now have also a spherical compost tumbler. And it's full! I found that latex gloves hadn't rotted. So I took them out and put them in the rubbish bin.

I finished improving the soil around the plants in the front garden and nature strip. Then I improved the soil around the blackberry in the back garden.

With the help of a neighbour, I re-erected the first (larger) compost tumbler. With lawn scissors, I attacked the grass and clover in the back garden. Thereby I filled up that tumbler.

Yesterday a friend helped me move my large cylindrical compost tumbler. Today I have been pruning dead twigs from the blackberry bush. And I've been chopping those into small pieces, going into both tumblers.