You enjoying the frosty weather @Northern_Piper ? I’d bet your bagpipes would freeze before finishing the first note.
I didn’t realize Canada reached -40 C and F.
The frozen indoor electric plug says a lot about how hard it is to heat houses.
Interesting photos
May I just point out that wherever a location is mentioned in those stories, it’s always Calgary. It does indeed sometimes get very cold in Alberta and the prairie provinces in the winter, but that’s no different than the northern parts of the US midwest, and it was exacerbated this year by a strong polar vortex probably strengthened by the current El Nino. Or, in other words, “Calgary” is not the same as “Canada”. 
When was this cold snap? I checked the weather in Calgary for the coming week and this is the forecast in Fahrenheit degrees:
44/24, Saturday, 1-27
46/29, Sunday, 1-28
47/32, Monday, 1-29
48/33, Tuesday, 1-30
46/33, Wednesday, 1-31
44/27, Thursday, 2-1
36/25, Friday, 2-2
For Calgary, this is more like April weather than January/February.
Meh, with all due respect to our American friends, they really don’t know how big we are (five time zones). And they forget we have provinces, much like US states, so when one province or city does something, it’s “Canada does something!” Um, no, it’s the city of Bathurst, New Brunswick, or the city of Chilliwack, BC or the province of Ontario that did something.
That being said, I’m south of Calgary, and it does get down to -40 here. Thankfully, not often, and some winters not at all, but when it does, as it did for the past few weeks, it’s no fun. Even with my block heater plugged in, the cold defeats it and my car won’t start. Thankfully, there’s a convenience store a three-block walk away, so I can get essentials, but even making that walk at -40 is no fun. Last time I headed down to the store in that weather, I wore a Covid mask to keep my face warm. Otherwise, it would have been frostbitten.
From about January 10/11, 2024 to about January 23/24, 2024. The warmest we got was -30C, and it was often colder. I lived through it, with a furnace on its last legs, kept going with spit and baling twine, and a car that wouldn’t start.
I live in Spokane and we had a cold snap around the same time. For about four days, it never got above 5 degrees F. It’s pretty mild right now. We could top 50 degrees F during the weekend. Except for those 10 days in mid-January, our winter’s been pretty much like that.
Say no more. So you watch KHQ? It’s a part of my cable package. I like it, the way they actually show Calgary and Lethbridge on their weather maps. Not the actual weather for there, of course, the only weather that ever happens, according to KHQ, is south of the 49th. Everything north of there is … well, it doesn’t exist. Unless it’s to say, “a polar vortex from Canada.”
I’m in Lethbridge, Alberta, by the way. Nice to meet you, neighbour!
It would have to be pretty damn essential for me to walk three blocks in -40 degrees. “Ice water in your veins” is not supposed to be taken literally.
A tip of my cap to the hardy, and well-insulated, Spoons.
China is having similar temperatures, below -40 C at this time also.
Of course, that’s on top of Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha). but it’s in China.
I remember a game show had a question about Canada’s major cities. They’re all fairly close to the US border. That’s as warm as it gets.
We think of Montana, N Dakota. Wisconsin, Maine etc. as very, very cold. Canada is North of that.
Heck, we sometimes get temperatures that low in some parts of the US. Not even counting Alaska.
And all of Ireland is even further north. Cork, the southernmost city in Ireland, is the same latitude as Saskatoon. And Ireland has palm trees.
I was unimpressed by the photo of heavy frost forming on the inside of a window. I remember that well from winter in a rental house in South Dakota.*
*of course, our “central heating” came from a single vent in the middle of the living room floor. It got a bit chilly in the outer portions of the home during subzero temps.
There are two fallacies there. The first fallacy is the same one as in the statement that “Canada” experienced -40C temperatures. “Canada” didn’t; Alberta and probably Saskatchewan did. Much of Canada is indeed north of the US midwest, but not by any means all of it.
The second fallacy is assuming that it’s going to be colder the further north you go. Coastal BC and large swaths of Canada east of Manitoba all the way to the Maritimes are much warmer in the winter, on average, than the US midwest despite mostly being further north.
Also, parts of southern Ontario are further south than a lot of the US. In fact the very southernmost tip of Ontario is further south than California’s northern border.
Meh. The recent cold snap wasn’t much, hardly even worth talking about. Maybe Alberta had it worse than central Sask? Dunno, but it was just an entirely unremarkable cold snap. And now we’ve got a week of above-freezing temps in the forecast, almost 20 degrees C above seasonal norms and until recent years a lot more unusual for the end of January than a week at -35.
Calgary is actually a fairly warm city, because of the Chinooks. I grew up in Lethbridge, which has similar weather. We got no snow buildup over the winter because there were so many melting cycles.
If you want to see cold Canada, choose Edmonton instead.
The coldest temperature on record for Edmonton is -49.4 C. That’s also the coldest temperature ever recorded in Alberta. The coldest temperature recorded in Canada was -63C (-81F), recorded in 1947.
-40C is not rare here. Here are the lowest temps in Edmonton for the past 12 years:
2023: -45.1
2022: -41
2021: -43
2020: -42
2019: -41
2018: -39
2017: -35
2016: -33
2015: -36
2014: -39
2013: -39
2012: -34
2011: -40
In the 2000’s we had five years in which the temperature went below -40.
I got impatient during the cold snap and hiked/ran at -23F. The beard definitely helps! I was pretty frosty (but warm) by the end. We saw -40 the morning after we got our new EV–good for the range.
Gulf Stream.
If it slows down, as some are predicting, Ireland and the UK will experience extreme changes in climate.
Not undercutting Spoons, but it’s like runners always say: with the proper clothing, you can run in harsh conditions.
We didn’t get -40, but it was around -33 here. I walked home from work a few times. It’s doable.
Heck, it’s hard to play the pipes outdoors in the wet when it’s just above freezing! Reeds accumulate moisture.
Belated Robbie Burns day by the way. I had a nice tumbler of Oban 14 year old scotch.