ROFL at Fuji, since he lives in the only part of Canada where it never gets to freezing and half a cm of snow shuts down the city…
Cold ain’t that bad if you know how to dress for it. Aluminum insoles, long underwear, piece of cake. It was -10 C here in NY on the weekend, but that’s nowhere near cold enough to stop me from bicycling around town.
I found it worse when I moved from Montreal to Vancouver, because I kept looking out my window, seeing all that greenery, and proceeded to underdress when it was 6 or 7 C. Took me a year to recalibrate my coldie-sense.
Well, we’re in Madison, WI - it’s cold here but not like the crazy cold that our Canadian friends get. It still seems damn cold to me (a transplanted Southerner.)
So far - this is only my second winter here - it seems like the M.O. is to stay inside and drink a lot.
I prefer cold to hot, too. I will walk half an hour to work in any temperature on the negative scale, but I really don’t enjoy it when the weather heats up. Picture me trying to dodge from shade to shade.
It’s a funny thing, ya know? I feel cold, but it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m not the standard to judge Canadians by, though - most people I know don’t like cold nearly as much as I do.
I think mostly we were raised with it from birth, so we don’t really think about it. Taking a drive in winter means letting the car warm up, scraping or brushing it off, possibly having crappy roads to drive on, sitting uncomfortably in all your bulky layers, and being cold until you get back inside again. That’s just the way it is, and we deal. Basically, in winter, everything’s just harder and more time-consuming.
But it’s all worth it when SPRING DAY COMES!!! That’s the first day in March or April when it gets really nice out, and everybody who isn’t hospitalized is out doing something in the glorious warm sunshine. You always get one more blizzard after that, but you don’t care, because SPRING DAY was here, and you have had your faith restored.
Actually, we just bundle up, wear boots and pray for a city-wide snowday. It snowed so much in Toronto on Sunday night. I got to school on time because I live about five blocks away, but my class had a science test first thing. But, everyone was stuck on the highway, so my teacher cancelled it! But, I’ve lived in Toronto my whole life, so I’m used to it.
My class took the science test today and I failed it, anyways.
Yeah, you basically just deal. What everyone else said. Layers, layers, layers. I’ve seen people bitching bitterly about the cold when they’re out in just a jacket, no scarf, no gloves, no tuque – sweetie, what do you expect?
It sometimes gets so cold I’ll curtail some activities to stay inside and nest. Not my usual activities though, since fortunately I live a block from the metro and our downtown is basically built underground. It is very convenient.
Beyond that, I walk quickly, take more buses and metros when I might otherwise walk, and so forth.
Saskatchewanian here, born and raised, and no problems at all with the cold, as long as you bundle up, and keep your car’s various warmers plugged in. Back in the day, when gas was still cheap, there were people who left their trucks running all winter, so they didn’t need block heaters or any of that sissy stuff. The big problem in the winter is the wind. The last blizzard could be over for days and if you’ve got the wind, the snow is still up whirling around. I don’t know if they still do it, but the cops used to park on the highway at the Weyburn city limits and pull people over to tell them “We’re not coming out there after you!”
Of course, I lived in Vancouver for years and just moved to Texas, so I don’t have to worry about the cold any more.
I live in Chicago and HATE the winters. I grew up in SE Ohio, and things aren’t a whole lot better there. I’ll eventually move to mid-Michigan, where it’ll be colder than both. How do I deal?
I try my hardest to enjoy abject misery.
For real–there’s nothing mundane that makes me want to cry more than standing at a bus stop on Lake Michigan in January. OK, possibly scraping a foot of snow (and a glaze of ice) off my car while my fingers are going numb (through my gloves) and my pant legs are getting soaked through as my body heat melts the caked-on snow. I’ve also got a bad case of SAD, so yeah, I’m trying harder to get used to misery.
Well, Massachusetts isn’t as far north as most of the previous posters but it does get cold here. But, I prefer the cold. I like to bundle. I love sleeping under 5 layers of comforters but having my face cold. It makes cuddling all night easier too
Anyway, I was in Florida the first week of September. Despite it being my first visit to Disney, I was pretty miserable. It was too damn hot, too damn muggy and too damn hurricany. I will never understand how someone can live happily in Florida.
By the way - yesterday, I drove from upstate New York to my home in Western Massachusetts. It was cold, snowy, and ugly. I used up two bottles of wiper fluid just getting from Burlington to Brattleboro. But, I was also walking around at every stop in a t-shirt. The temperature was perfect. Also, there’s nothing cooler than taking a ferry across a frozen lake and plowing through ice floes.
[QUOTE=Millit the Frail]
IOK, possibly scraping a foot of snow (and a glaze of ice) off my car while my fingers are going numb (through my gloves) and my pant legs are getting soaked through as my body heat melts the caked-on snow./QUOTE]
This reminds me, a few things I do hate about winter:
I hate the sound of walking or driving on snow. I also hate scraping frost. Ice is ok. Frost is bad. That sound drives me crazy. Of course, I get the same reaction when someone pulls something out of a chest freezer - the kind that gets ice or frost on the inside. Some people have problems with nails on a blackboard or teeth scraping on a fork. My problem is frost. It is pretty though.
The winter with its cold is a joyous time of year. I can ski 'till my heart’s content. Then curl up for dinner in front of a wood stove, and sauna with a friend, rollling in the snow under the stars between bouts.
The winter isn’t something to be dealt with – it is something to be relished.
Another Saskatchewan resident here. We’ve had some really cold snaps this year. There’s been a few days where the temperature was below minus 40 and the windchill factor was -50 to -52 celsius. It was ugly. In that weather, plugging your car’s block heater in is a must, and a remote starter for your car is a darn good idea. And it’s not uncommon for short stops at malls, etc., to see a row of running vehicles. Before travelling out into the rural areas, having a winter survival kit in your car is good insurance, as is having a cell phone. Winter travelling can also be challenging with icy road conditions, or in stormy or blizzard conditions.
Relatively speaking then, -20 to -15 celsius feels quite pleasant. Currently it’s minus 11, and I didn’t even button my parka or put on gloves to come home from work. Nor did I plug in my car.
The weather here shows the extremes of not only the cold in the winter, but the heat in the summer. Temperatures in the mid to high 30’s in the summer aren’t uncommon, i.e. well into the 90s farenheit. And actually, all things considered, I prefer the minus 15 to the plus 35.
I also think it’s a bit different for the folks that live in the cities and use public transportation. And it seems that the folks in eastern US have more of a dress code for work than we do in the west.
Other people have said ‘you just get used to it’. That’s very true for most folks, but I think that some people just don’t.
My wife and I sleep with the window cracked open in the winter. Under a sheet, a blanket and a quilt. No down. Our bedroom at night is stays between 50-60f. It’s 60f down there right now (I’m in the loft, above our bedroom). We shut off the downstairs and let the stove do it’s work. Now that we are on a thermostat on propane, instead of just a straight wood stove, it works out quite nice. Nice cool bedroom, cozy downstairs.
I’ve become very used to incredibly wide swings of temperature. We live in a passive solar house, lot’s and lot’s of windows. At elevation, with the sun beaming in and reflecting off the snow it’s easy to get this house up to 90f during the day, just from the sun; while it may be 20f in the shade outside. When the sun goes down, the temp drops. The heat leaves and we settle in and let the heat leach out from the concrete that was heated up during the day.
Well, Vancouver is home base, but I’m living in Thunder Bay, Ontario at the moment, and have spent some time in the arctic, so it wasn’t just conjecture.
Actually, I have felt colder in the damp cool of Vancouver than I ever have in cold parts of Canada, save possibly for windy cold snaps in the arctic. Humidity makes a significant difference.
Now you’re talking. Not only do I relish it, but it is a great source of pride. We mock the students from Florida when they whip out their parkas at 40F.
I bike to work all winter long (I luckily live near a maintained bike path and it’s only a mile.) When you stomp into work covered in snow with the wind howling and a 40 below wind chill, you get bragging rights over those puny mortals who drove into work. (Oh sure, they live 10 miles away and really had no possible way to bike in, but the bragging rights are still there.)
I hear what enipla is saying about the 4wd vehicles. But around here (midwest with no mountains) the biggest use for 4wd in the winter is to give people a false sense of security. They tend to forget that 4wd doesn’t let you stop any faster. Most of the vehicles in the ditch are 4wd.
And to continue the rant… I was in Phoenix once. Once. In February. The oppressive unrelenting sun beating down on everything. No shade. Hot. Dry. No relief anywhere. Drove me insane. I shudder to think about the hell it must be in the summer. Nope.
In winter the sun is supposed to be your friend, shining down as hard as it can to battle the glorious sparkling whiteness of the snow. The wind howls but your head is kept warm by the fur of little bunnies. You can tell the (non-wind chill adjusted) temperature by the feel of the air sucked into your nose and the sound of the snow under your feet. It makes you glad to be alive.
(The preceding does not aply to anywhere that has cold and cloudy winters. Winter in Ann Arbor, MI drives up sales of Zantac.)
Polish hat cure- stay in bed, put your hat on the bedpost, drink vodka until you see 2 hats. Its still cold, but you care less. My Grandpa recommneded this for head colds, but it has got to be just as good for any other kind of cold.
Who said it was? The OP says that PA is way too cold for me, but very mild to an upper midwesterner. I was using it as a measuring stick.
As for the cold, I guess I’m just one of those people that can’t take it. I grew up in central NC where it only snows maybe every other year or so, and very, very rarely gets below 25F, and despite a 10-week frozen hell from Jan-Mar 1994 in Indiana, I’ve lived between NC, AZ, and CA my whole life. None of which are known for their cold weather.
Even skiing in CO, CA, and WV, I almost always get frostbite. Hell, I’ve gotten genuine, swollen purple-fingered frostbite at 40F with 2 pairs of gloves on before.
On the other hand, I love the heat. The first summer I lived here I had about a 50-minute drive home through traffic and I would do it with the AC off and the windows down on 115F days because it felt so comfortable to swelter like that. I’ve gotten to the point now where the little annoyances get on my nerves a bit more, like sitting on a park bench and literally having your ass burned, but for the most part it’s just the dryness that bothers me. The summers are relatively short (the only truly hot months are July and August), and the rest of the year is pretty mild.
Try mittens rather than gloves: a thin wicking layer of poly weave, followed by a thick insulating layer of poly fleece, followed by an outside shell of windproof/breathable Goretex. As soon as perspiration builds, change to a dry set. If that does not cut it, toss in some battery operated mitten heaters.
We also amuse ourselves by guestimating the temperature. (Dress for the time of year, in layers and so forth). On a short walk you can tell by what happens to you or what you notice. Snow starts squeaking under your shoes or boots at about -12C, mucous freezes in your nostrils (when you inhale) at below -20, You eyelids will start sticking together at -35C – -40C (at which point you really don’t want to be staying outside longer that 10 minutes, no matter how apropriately you’ve dressed).
(Yeah Toronto doesn’t generally get THAT cold, but I was an import from Prince George, B.C. which does on occasion go for the deep freeze).
Hear, hear! We moved from northern Minnesota to Denver last year and the complete lack of an actual winter here is killing me. It was 60 degrees two days ago. Above zero! I say I miss the winter and people say “Do you miss it being -20?” YES.
