The Scene: Yesterday morning. Discovered in bed, Northern Piper and the Beloved. Radio playing. Cheerful CBC announcers gleefully going over the weather.
The Beloved: “It’s going to be hard getting the dogs to go out this morning. They just said it’s 42 below.”
Piper: (groggily) “Yes, but our back yard’s pretty sheltered, so the wind doesn’t get there. What’s the temperature?”
The Beloved: “42 below”
Piper: “Yes, but what is it without the wind chill?”
The Beloved: (voice of calm patience that women use with slow men folk) “42 below. That’s without wind chill.”
Piper: “Oh. That’s cold. The dogs won’t want to go out.”
[Scene of domestic violence involving pillow deleted as too graphic for the tender Dopers.]
At any rate, when I recovered consciousness, it was a wonderful, crisp Saskatchewan day. The ice crystals hung in the air like mini-prisms, the smoke from all of the chimneys sent crooked columns up, my view of the park from my office window was alternating between a deep ice haze (so thick I couldn’t see the buildings across the park), and one of those beautiful clear days that you can see forever. And it turns out that elsewhere in Saskatchewan, we had the coldest temperature recorded anywhere in the world for the day (52.3 below), again according to the bubbly CBC folk.
And best of all, it’s much the same today, so I’ve proclaimed it to be my annual It’s-Too-Cold-for-Piper-to-Go-to-Work Day.
Coldest temperature in the world! Yay us!
(-52.3°C is -62.1°F for you Murkins.)
Our low temperature in Calgary for the last couple of days got down to around
-34°C (-29°F) before the windchill - I walked over to Safeway to get some groceries in it (you may have guessed by now that I’m Saskatchewan born and raised :D). It was a nice walk, on a beautiful clear sunny day.
I’m so ashamed of some Calgarians I’ve been hearing on the news - they want schools to set up shuttle buses for the students so they don’t have to walk a block outside in these temperatures. Hello - I believe these students are Canadians. Part of our whole identity as a country is our ability to live and work in such cold temperatures. If these kids don’t learn how to live in the cold, they’ll probably regret it someday, cause it ain’t going anywhere.
My mom was born in Saskatchewan. I remember her stories of walking to school alone when she was a little girl in -40 temperatures.
I love cold winter. The brilliance of sun shining on snow, the way snow drifts across the roads, the glitter of snow and hoarfrost ice crystals in the streetlights at night, the soft hush that envelops the city during a snowfall, the fantastic shapes and sculpures that the wind makes of the drifts, thye skirl of ice crustals against a pale blue sky as the wind blows the snow off the roof…
Not for me the cold rains and depressing dank humidity around zero degrees that we get every fall in Toronto. Give me cold… or give me California.
I’ve heard it freezes before it hits the ground (which is the opposite thing). I tried this once at -30 F (-35 C). It made a bunch of steam but most of the water just hit the ground. I’d say it doesn’t work either way.
It’s supposed to be -21 F (-30 C) in Minneapolis tonight (colder in the 'burbs of course). I don’t care what kind of pride you take in living in cold areas you have to respect this weather. Toughing it out is just plain foolish. You can’t will yourself not to get frostbite.
Who said anything about toughing it out? Big boots (thinsulate lined), gloves and mitts, toque and hood, parka bundled up tight, and car running for five minutes before we go to work (screw global warming caused by excess emissions - I don’t see it happnening anytime soon!) And you did see the bit about the annual It’s-Too-Cold-for-Piper-to-Go-to-Work Day, right?
In short, I can admire crisp frigid Saskatchewan weather from inside.
Sadly, I didn’t get a too-cold-for-Gorsnak-to-go-to-work day. I know Saskatoon hasn’t been the coldest place in the province, but let me just tell you, my car doesn’t like -45C. It complains more vociferously than I do, and it just doesn’t heat properly in this weather. If I crank the heater fan up to high, I can actually see the temp gauge drop, and pretty soon the air it’s blowing is barely warm.
But on the plus side, everyone always seems friendlier during these cold snaps.
You have no idea how much we respect this weather. There is nothing but respect for this kind of cold (and a deep, down-to-your-bones loathing, but that’s not important right now). Respecting it means that I can walk to Safeway in -33 weather - I was in no danger at any time, except if I were to have fallen and not been able to get inside. I dressed appropriately, kept moving, told my husband where I was going, and I stayed on busy roads so someone would see me if the unexpected were to occur. This kind of stuff is what Canadian kids need to know - this weather will kill you if you don’t know how to deal with it.
Have you tried putting some cardboard/carpet in the front of your car, in front of the radiator? That usually fixes the “won’t blow anything but cold air” problem. (But remember to take it out in spring!)
Update to my previous post…for those Doper’s who live in Regina, I live in the East end, on the outskirts of the city (Prince of Wales), and my condo is right on the SE corner of the building. I can now say I know where every draft is along each window on that corner of the building.
On the bright side, we finally are getting the snow I was bitching that we didn’t have
Y’know, with an election coming up, I’d vote for any candidate that promised to install great big fans on the Minnesota/Canadian border that would blow north in the winter and south in the summer.
I can’t quite compete with the folk in Saskatchewan (what a fun word, btw!), but here in the beautiful Windy City I woke up to -16, -26 with wind chill yesterday. That’s Fahrenheit. A quick check reveals that to be -27/-32C. It wasn’t hugely fun because unlike Piper, I did not take a WickyDay - I went out with a long-sleeve shirt, a sweater, a sweatshirt, a coat, long underwear and pants, two pairs of socks, a scarf and a hat and one glove (I lost the other one a few days ago and haven’t gotten a new pair yet) and stood on the corner as usual waiting for my bus. After that I have to take the El, which was running late because, and I quote the recorded message playing over the PA, “of unusual weather conditions”.
Right now, it’s a deceitfully gorgeous sunny morning. I just checked weather.com and it’s -1F/-18C. No wind chill at all! Wacky.
After growin’ up in North Jersey, lovin’ life in Arizona for 4 1/2 years, suffering through Minot, ND for 3 1/2, and now getting shrinkage in Great Falls, Montana, I have to echo UncleBeer:
You people are friggin’ crazy, ya know that don’t ya, eh?
Tripler
And when we hit -28 below, I thought life had come to a standstill.
Mrs. Eggerhaus and I both left MN for warmer climes 20-some-years-ago because damn cold is damn cold and we’d had enough of it. Our son now attends University in Minneapolis. He must have some nasty recessive gene because he LOVES cold weather…and plans on moving to ALASKA to complete his degree because the damned winter isn’t long enough in MN! Holy crap! The kid thrives in that weather and I swear if you cut him he’d bleed antifreeze.
He emailed that yesterday it was so damned cold in Mpls that the Ice Palace at the Winter Carnival…the friggin’ ICE PALACE for chrissakes…didn’t open until noon.
OTOH, if he’s happy there, that’s where he belongs!
