Here’s the thing. I’m Canadian and I have been Canadian my whole life. Not only that, I live in Montreal which is an area of the country known for brutally cold winters and large amounts of snow. I’m used to it in the sense that this is just the way our weather is. Our summers make you melt with the humidity and our winters make you wonder what settlers were thinking when they looked around this stupid frozen tundra and said, “yep, looks like home to me!”
That doesn’t mean I like it. I’ve always said that I live in the wrong place because I’m not a fan of extreme temperatures. I like hot summer days but I don’t like suck-out-your-will-to-live humidity. I don’t mind a little cold and some snow but I don’t like days where your nose freezes shut five seconds after you walk out the door.
The latter is what we’re dealing with today. This morning it was -36C which is the equivalent of -32F for those of you who have not yet embraced the metric system. It doesn’t matter which system you use, it all translates to “bloody fucking cold” in Celsius and Fahrenheit alike. In the short time I was outside today my thighs were so cold that it took a good 20 minutes for them to warm up.
Hydro Quebec was also asking people to please not overuse electricity in order to not over-tax the power grids because obviously no one wants a power failure on a day like this. I laughed when I heard that because yes, it’s important to turn off lights that you aren’t using and maybe wait a bit before running major appliances but convincing people not to jack up the heat isn’t going to happen.
Anyway! The other day I saw this video of a woman up in Yellowknife (that’s in the Northwest Territories in case you were wondering) on a -30C day. She took boiling water and threw it into the air where it instantly turned into steam. I mean INSTANTLY.
I figured if our weather today must be stupidly cold I might as well get some enjoyment out of it. I tried it too, although I didn’t feel like bundling up myself and Breanna to go outside. We ended up just throwing it out the window in the stairwell instead and it totally worked. Luckily George is home so he came with us and held the camera.
Can we fast forward to spring now?
HOLY COW. Also, I love how you translate into the degrees F for us unedumacated Amurricans. 😀 We are DAMNED stubborn about not converting to Metric, aren’t we?
LOL! Convert! It makes life SO MUCH EASIER.
(Though I still use feet and inches for measuring most of the time.)
I wish we would convert to metric like the civilized world… 😉
Is that an icy splat on the wall there from previous attempts, or just a coincidence?
Good eye! That was indeed from my first attempt before George came out to film it. 🙂
Heh. Just the sort of thing to make a neighbor very curious.
When I was a kid, I would go out and make an “ice garden” whenever it got really cold, pouring water over everything and watching the icicles and slick patches form.
Although it wasn’t quite as cold here this morning as it was in Montreal (-18 Celsius when I left home, with a windchill of -30), the temperature around here today is *very* unusual. I’m not sure if my skin has felt coldness like that since I left Montreal!
From summer in the Antipodes, I can say “that is so cool!”
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