Well, not real 40 below. Only 24 below, with wind chill taking it to 40 below.
Finally found the time to do the last gift shopping, plus Mrs. Piper sent me out to forage for the last foodstuffs needed for Christmas. So, out to the Big Box territory at the east of Regina, where the winds blow in from the Prairies to cut to your marrow, and the grey clouds and the blowing snow turn the sun into a faint glowing dot, low in the sky even at noon.
Running from big box to big box, huddled against the wind, “if your eyes you’d close/then the lashes froze/'til sometimes you couldn’t see.” And the freezing headache from the wind hitting the forehead, barely alleviated by the winter version of the Tilley hat, with its fold-down forehead and ear flaps.
But, the list is done! everything is crossed off! back to the shelter of chez Piper, with no plans to venture out into the cold yet again. Now it’s just fun stuff like Christmas baking and wrapping the presents.
Brrrr! You can keep that to yourself. I’ve just been doing some Christmas shopping, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, on a balmy 25 degree Sunday afternoon.
Yeah, it was a bit brisk here too. Only -11C before the wind chill. I went up to see my dad in the nursing home, and got there just in time to wheel him down to see Santa.
25C in shorts, and December Christmas shopping? That’s just …wrong. Half the fun in Christmas shopping is conquering the elements, which is why Canadians have so many interconnected climate-controlled multi-block spaghetti-tunnelied city areas.
Yeah, we’re feeling your pain, Piper. We ended up shopping today even though our Christmas shopping is done just to get some exercise out of the cold (-38ºC here with the windchill). Come on chinook, already!
(We had a very tasty ice cream cone at the mall, too. People looked at us funny.)
Well, for the record, right now (2:49AM, Sunday morning) it’s -35C, with no wind, and therefore no winchill. Sunday night, it’s supposed to drop to -38C.
We were out yesterday as well. Don’t know what the wind chill was, but the car thermometer read -29 and there was wind, so it felt colder. Got the last of the Christmas gifts; today’s errand will be to the supermarket for the food. The car has been plugged in all night, so it should start without a problem.
My sister lived in Australia for a number of years. Good Canadian girl that she is, she never got used to hot, unsnowy Christmases. As much as I’d like a chinook about now, I don’t think I’d want to celebrate Christmas in a perpetual one.
You’re in Lethbridge now! My parents are now in Barons, and I lived in Fort Macleod for about ten years. I remember a year when I got a shiny red ten-speed bike for Christmas, and I was out riding it that day without a coat. I miss my Chinooks.
Winter here (Baltimore) is rain, rain, rain. In late January and early February, we’ll get some sloppy, wet snow. This will cause the locals to freak out, buy all of the milk, bread, and toilet paper in the stores, and schools to be closed. The government offices also go on ‘snow delay’. It’s enough to make a Prairie girl nuts.
Chinooks tend to peter out around Swift Current. The idea of riding a bike on Christmas Day seems wrong, somehow. Unless you’ve made your own bike snow tires by wrapping yellow rope on the tires, as one of my school chums did.
I think we’re in the icebox for the long haul this winter.
And I recall you’re gong to spend Christmas at a beach. It just does not compute. No snow? No sub-zero temperatures? No windchill? No concerns whether your car, stuffed with shopping, has turned into a cold iron block in the parking lot, immobile until the weather changes in the New Year? What’s the point unless it’s a struggle with the elements?
And then when you make it back home with your hard-won purchases, and you’ve got a warm fire in the fireplace and a vin chaud, and all you have to do is relax as he wind howls? that’s Christmas!
Come to the north side of the world for a real Christmas experience, where you fight the elements, not just your fellow shoppers!
So do most of the locals. It’s been between -20 and -30 (not including the wind chill) for about ten days now, and the locals admit that spell this cold lasting this long without a chinook is somewhat unusual, especially for December.
Cunctator, I think you ought to try to make it up here next year, for a Canadian Prairie Christmas. Between the Prairie Dopers, I’m sure we could get you kitted out in all kinds of cold-weather gear and send you out in the weather for gifts and groceries and everything else. (How are your “driving on snowy roads” skills? :)) But finishing everything and enjoying a drink by the fire, as Northern Piper notes, is truly Christmas. When can we expect you?
All temperatures in Canada are Celsius (C). If there is a windchill given, it is also in C (it could be expressed as heat loss in watts per square metre, but that wouldn’t mean much to us). It is most often given as a “Feels like -XXºC.”
That always gives me pause when I read about it on these boards - a little snow or a storm, and everyone has to race to the store to stock up? Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Yes. And thankfully the forecasts for Christmas and Boxing Day are reasonably mild at the moment: 24 and 27 respectively.
Oh, there are concerns and struggles with the the elements. They’re just different ones: coming back to an oven-like car in the carpark. Trying to transport perishable food and hoping you can get it home into the refrigerator before it goes off in the heat. Almost expiring in the humidity in the church’s choir loft at Midnight Mass. Etc.
I could say the same thing about last night, relaxing in the garden with a good red, enjoying the twilight of the longest day.
You’re braver than I am, Piper. I went out to the east side Big Box hell for lunch, and decided it was too cold to even think about Christmas shopping. I came home after lunch and cuddled under a blanket, sipping a cup of tea.
