That’s a good story, Elfkin. I’ve thought sometimes about extending an open invitation to southern Dopers to come visit my husband and me during winter - we’d put them up here if they wanted to come experience a real winter. 
That’s what I’m saying! Canadians probably scoff at us Texans for wearing even light jackets when the temperature is in the 50s (10-15 C), but we don’t consider 85 to really be very hot either. 95 is right around the summer average high- most of June, July, August and part of September run about 80 for the lows, 95 or more for highs.
One thing I’ve noticed is that N. America seems to have much more diurnal variation in temperature than Europe. Our temps here in Dallas seem to have a 15-25 degree or more variation between the daily highs and lows. (80/96, 32/55, etc…)
On my trips to Europe, I don’t recall more than 10 degrees, and that was summertime in Scotland. Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and London didn’t have more than a 3-4 C daily swing, and usually more on the order of 2 C.
There’s a certain “thermal inertia” that we take advantage of in our daily lives with respect to cold weather. It’s pretty easy to put on a coat indoors where it’s warm and carry a little “bubble” of warm air around for a while.
When you’re out all day, you eventually lose your hot air bubble, and it’s you vs. the cold. That’s why freezing temps don’t seem bad at home, but when you’re out all day, they seem a lot more uncomfortable.
Wasn’t there just one day above 30 last summer? I think it was when I was in town for my Grandfathers 100th birthday. Of course when I was back 6 weeks later for his funeral it was cool and rainy.
In Toronto this past Sunday it was -20 C (-4 F). Wind chill was -33 C (-27.4 F). Today the high is supposed to be 0 C (32 F).
Yeah, the truth is that the weather is no joke because houses around here aren’t built to put up with a wide degree of temperature variation. My parents’ house is about a hundred years old and it doesn’t have central heating/cooling. There are two heaters, one in the living room and one in the master bedroom, and for cooling, there’s a ceiling fan in the kitchen. This is pretty typical in California. So when it’s 63 degrees outside, it’s 63 degrees inside. When the temperature falls into the 30s (which happens occasionally, in the night time), it’s not a whole heck of a lot warmer indoors.
My apartment back in Michigan, which had central heating, was definitely more comfortable in winter than my parents’ house in California, because the temperature was easy to control. OTOH, the high today is going to be 66, so it’s hard to complain too much.
Minus 14 degrees F. yesterday here. Tomorrow up into the 30’s.
The BAD weather doesn’t start until Feburary. The really really treacherous month is March - all the very worst storms have happened in March.
That sounds likely. We had a fairly crappy summer last year, which was actually okay with me because I had a lot of digging to do in the yard.
bump, I give you full leave to laugh at any Canadians visiting you in summer and dying from the heat. I have no plans to ever visit southern states in summer - I know my limits!
Keep in mind, though, it’s only a real winter if you make them responsible for shoveling the driveway while they’re there. There are a lot of people who have a really romanticized view of winter based on a weekend they spent somewhere snowy at a B&B…while someone else did all the hard work associated with keeping the roads and driveways clear. People who have to shovel three times a week don’t go on about how it looks “just like a postcard!” after it snows. 
Hah - that’s a good idea. “I saved shovelling the sidewalk for you - it’s only 100 yards or so, and you need to get the packed snow and ice off down to bare pavement, okay? Then later we can go for a walk to Safeway to pick up milk - you did bring snow boots with good grip, because the roads are icy and not everyone shovels their walks. It’s only -15, you big baby - put on a sweater and you’ll be fine.”
“We’ll be parking the cars outside this week for your benefit, too - you can get up at 6:30 am and go out in the -20, pitch black day and scrape the windows so we can see out of them to drive, then we’ll drive for half an hour, and you can experience the joy that is hot air finally coming out of the heater just as you reach your destination.”
See, I’ve said the “it looks like a postcard!” thing…but then added immediately afterward “now if only I didn’t have to shovel it all.”
Calgary Winter Dopefest! Actually, we should all head up to Banff, and introduce our American friends to a true winter Rocky Mountain outing.
Anybody game? I could use a winter weekend at the Banff Springs… 
IME, even extremely cold weather (-35C / -31F or so for me) is easy to cope with, as long as the air is dry and there’s little wind, as in the flat, wooded, inland areas of Fennoscandia; the coasts of Northern Europe, with their moist winds always blowing, feel colder in comparison, even if the temps are just -10C (14F) or so. The coastal cold goes straight through you, while the Arctic woodland cold sort of keeps it’s distance, if that makes any sense. Folks living around the Arctic Circle like to make fun of us soft-skinned Southerners, but temperatures simply aren’t the whole story. I totally buy that the British winter is miserably cold, as pansy as the temps there are.
That’s exactly it, Toxylon, and it’s something I probably should have mentioned in my first post–it’s not as cold, but it’s a DAMP cold. I’m pretty sure that if it ever got to -30 or lower in Britain, human habitation would be made VERY difficult, if not impossible.
I think hot temperatures work the same way. Sure, it may get to 120 or whatever in the desert, and sure, it’s no picnic, but it’s a DRY heat. It doesn’t get nearly as hot here, but it’s very wet, sticky, and unpleasant, nonetheless.
I’ll give you the misery of damp cold, too - it’s quite dry here, and I can tolerate the cold quite well. My husband spent a few winters in Ontario where it’s milder but damper in winter, and he says that the damp cold is quite miserable. I’ll take my dry, sunny, cold prairie winters over damp, cloudy, miserable winters.
…it would be exactly as humid as it is in places that routinely get -30 temperatures. The water-carrying ability of air at that temperature is virtually nonexistent, and during any cold snap the relative humidity at the coldest part of the day is 100%, falling rapidly if daytime temperatures rise appreciably. Here is the coldest day in Saskatoon in the last decade. Relative humidity is 100% till 10am at a temperature of -42C, and the condition is given as “freezing fog” until 1pm. But while relative humidity may be high absolute humidity is very low, so it really doesn’t matter. Nor would it matter in Britain, unless the laws of physics are different on that side of the Atlantic. You simply can’t have “damp cold” effects at those temps.
The whole damp cold thing is overstated anyways. Try staying outside on a -40 day long enough to notice the bone-chilling nature of a damp -10 day, wearing what you would in the damp -10. Or rather, don’t, as I wouldn’t want your death from hypothermia on my head.