This is an improvement from the -57C/-70F windchill reported earlier!
Yeah, I’m just going to be in bed with my heating pad and cappuccino, thanks. I went to the mall today but didn’t want to wear my heavy parka inside the warm mall so I did a mad dash from the car.
Western Canada, where everyone installs both central heat and central air conditioning! Half the year we’re freezing, a quarter of the year we’re too damn hot, and the other quarter is, in Little Red’s words, just right.
I, for one, already have my winter vacation in February booked. Punta Cana, here I come!
I don’t know if it’s ever been quite that cold in Eastern Ontario, but believe me, it’s been close enough that it really doesn’t matter anymore.
Winter is a bitch some years. The thing about really cold weather is that you don’t get much snow. The thing about normal temperatures is that you do get snow.
Hey, we didn’t get a winter’s worth of snow in November this year, unlike last year. As far as I’m concerned we’re ahead of the game. Cold, you don’t have to shovel!
Last November I bought an electric leaf blower. The Home Depot guy thought I was nuts.
It’s the best thing since sliced bread. Great for blowing light snow off the car, the steps front and back and the walk, even if it’s three or four inches deep.
I can’t figure out why anyone would use a leaf blower instead of a lawn mower for leaves. It’s a hand-held snow blower.
It came with a warning not to store it outside, but I doubt the manufacturer considered its only use would be in temperatures that would freeze hell.
It’s gets amazingly cold here as well and I love it. I hate anything over 70 degrees or so. I suffer every Summer since it gets so hot and terribly humid.
One of our neighbours does that [use leaf blower for light snow removal]. I meant to buy one this fall for that purpose, but didn’t get around to it. Wonder if I could still find one?
Try Home Depot. When I bought it, I went to the customer-service desk, and the woman behind the counter checked the store computer that said there were still two in stock. She called for a garden guy who had to dig around in back.
I also bought a long, outdoors extension cord that wouldn’t crack in the cold.
When we visited San Francisco this summer, we saw places that had no outside doors - they were just open to the elements. It looked so very, very weird to our Canadian eyes! I get that they have a very different climate than we do, but I just couldn’t do that, even there. I want good doors and good windows and proper, insulated walls, dammit!
For all the other things I dislike about America, I like the weather here in California where a single snowflake excites comments of "Look! It’s SNOW!!"
It snows and/or ices over here in SE Texas but so rarely that it is an Apocalyptic Event. When I was a bit older than a toddler I was “able” to build a snowman bigger than myself and I have never seen a bigger snow. It stripped the front yard of snow to do it.
But, when it freezes all hell breaks loose.
Houston is built around a series of what we call Bayous, in a reclaimed swamp (mostly) and we are 50mi/80km from the warm, wet Gulf of Mexico.
So we have a metricshitton of bridges, water galore and it is currently 34f/1c.
You do the math.
This is the fun part, it was 80f/27c a couple of days ago and will be again shortly. Our bridges retain enough heat to Zamboni themselves. A day with a high of 28f/-2c often means driving or walking on a sheet of glass that is very wet.
I went to a conference in Texas once and can attest that freezing ice on the sidewalks is an apocalyptic event. The sidewalk in front of the convention center was covered in ice until a truck showed up with palette loads of boxes containing those cylindrical Morton’s salt boxes from the grocery store. Several guys proceeded to cover the sidewalk by pouring salt out of those tiny metal spouts.
