Weather

a comparitively balmy -30 with the windchill in Saint John, N.B.

 It's only -11 here, with the windchill -23. 

 We're under a snowsquall warning and some of the roads are closed.

 It's a squeaky snow day!  

-32 in SJ this morning with a -39 wind chill

Yeah, a little scary when the north and south poles are warmer than a Canadian city. Mind you, I have read that towns north of 60 are often warmer than Winnipeg in winter, so it's possible that almost any place is warmer than Winnipeg in winter :) The online article does not show the graphic which showed the temps at 6am Wed to be -27 and -26 at the north and south poles respectively, Winnipeg -34C (before windchill).

It is a balmy, bright and sunny +2 here in the central interior Rockies. The snow has melted so much over the last 2 days, with the rain and warm temps, that we can see the grass and weeds sticking up in the ditches.

Went down to -5 last night though, because the sky was clear.

Off to get some mountain spring water for drinking today, wonderful day to snowshoe in and haul it. 

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"watching the tide roll away"

Quote:

I often cycle at 0 to 5c, and even a bit colder when there isn't any
serious snow on the ground, and I doubt you are much older than I am.

I miss cycling so much!

I could cycle when it's colder than 7 but often come home feeling sick and I think it's because I've lived so much in warmer places that somewhow my body doesn't adapt to exertion in the cold.

The weather's been cold here in London, overnights of about -22, daytime highs in the -teens.   People are complaining, but I remind them that in truly cold places, the weather forcasters on T.V. and the radio don't bother with the "minus" prefix on the temperatures.  

Yesterday on the way to work, I was driving south on Highbury Ave, and saw a cloudy misty thing in the air.  I thought was a snow squall, but it was just ice crystals, and I think, smog due to some kind of inversion.

I had hoped to see some sun dogs during the day, but the ice crystals must have been the wrong shape, or not high enough in the atmosphere.

This morning, the sunrise was all purples and magentas and pinks and blues.  Glorious.

When you walk, the snow is beyond just crunching, it squeaks like some wierd kind of styrafoam. 

CBC radio is going on and on and on about the cold.   I mean, -20 in January in Canada? 

This is a news story?  Please.

Residents of Winnipeg will be happy to know that as people remark to me about how cold it is here, and how it sucks, I look at them with a poker face and say:

"yeah, but it's a dry cold."

Boom Boom, how well insulated is your house?   As a stop gap, can you pile snow against the windward side of your house? 

What's your roof situation like?  Is it flat, and barren of snow?  If so, can you get snow on it?  I'm imagining it's flat.  Maybe that's where you are losing most of your heat.

I have a poorly insulated roof on the lean-to type extension on my house, which is where the kitchen and bathroom are.  I notice a big difference when there's a foot or so of snow on it, as opposed to when it's bare. 

Unfortunately, because the temperatures don't stay cold here, I have to remove the snow from the roof from time to time to eliminate the ice dam at the eaves trough, which, if neglected, will actually cause leaks in the roof as the melt water builds up. 

Finally, after about 6 weeks of below normal, the cold snap is breaking.  It's still -9, but the sun is shining, the wind is light and there's actual humidity in the air.

It's not so much that -25 or below is unexpected in the winter, but that we've had such a long stretch of -20 and below...  Usually you don't get more than a couple of weeks of extreme cold here at a crack.

WendyL wrote:

I am nostalgic for my Winterpeg and Labrador days... 

Heh. I'm just below Labrador, and woke up to -47C windchill just outside my window. You miss that???

It was -40 the day I moved out of Winterpeg.  The tarps on the roof of my Chevette split in the cold and flapped behind me like some maniacal winter spectre.  It was a good day to leave.

It's a balmy -10 this morning, which means the Foley artists who have been accompanying the starting of my van this past week will have gone back to Hollywood.

We got snow with the warm front though, so you know what I'll be doing today.

Boom Boom, the only other significant place I can think of where you are losing heat may be the sill between your foundation and the trailer body.  Some inexpensive caulking might solve that.  Although, if the conversion was done in the last decade or more, they should have done a good job on that area originally.

When you said "trailer" I keep thinking of those things that people tow behind cars and light trucks.  But it occurs to me that what you are talking about is what we call a "mobile home".  My niece and nephew's house started out as a mobile home, though you'd never know unless they told you.  I think I'm getting a better idea of what you are talking about. I am slow sometimes.

I haven't bought one in a while, but I believe Co detectors are not terribly expensive.  I should replace mine, my ex bought it so that makes it at least eight years old, possibly ten.  She got it because our furnace was so old.   I've since replaced the furnace, but the detector is still in use. 

If it allows you to be more aggressive in chasing down air leaks, it will pay for itself quickly.

Yeah, my niece and nephew supplement their propane heat with a wood burning stove in the basement.   I asked about the Co detector I gave them many years ago, and they said they don't use it because it went off all the time in the house they had previously. 

Yeesh.

I will buy them another.  I think the original ones were too sensitive to the presence of Co.  There were stories of people's detectors going off in Chicago years ago, due to an inversion during cold weather.  

There are cases every year of people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.  I'd be interested to know how many of those people were living in newer homes that are draft free, as compared to old drafty homes.

Here they are called 'mini homes'.  Though they aren't really tiny homes, which I have been seriously and ravenously researching in terms of downsizing.  Simple, small, thing-free.

It was another gorgeous day in the mountains, a tepid +8, and melting melting melting. But it has been cold, -8, at night because the sky is clear.

But the mountains are losing their snow pack fast. Slides notwithstanding.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

We had a huge blizzard Sunday night and all day Monday, with lots of snow, then Tuesday night the power went off until late yesterday afternoon (windchill was -42 when the power went out) and today I'm recovering from a bout of food poisoning last night probably connected to the power being out for 15 hours. I've been quiet this week for a reason. 

I will be. I have to go easy on my food choices today. I'm glad I brought in a lot of firewood yesterday before I got sick, because we have heavy snow coming this afternoon according to the forecast, better to stock up on firewood before the going gets rough. I think it was Tuesday when I took the skidoo out to make a path around the house - and I got stuck! The snow was really deep.

Yesterday my neighbour returned from a week away, and the water pipes in her house burst - last week we had two full days of -52C windchill, and I think she only has one baseboard heater - she heats mostly with wood, and of course her wood stove was off the whole time she was away. Quite a mess to come home to.  I made a path around her house with my skidoo so she could at least walk out to the woodshed and bring in some firewood.

It's been a nasty winter here, and it's only January - still February and March to survive yet.

Damn it. It's -40 windchill here, going to be even colder in a few hours, and our hydro went out - for the second night in a week. I'm using my battery power laptop to type this. We likely won't have power again until tomorrow unless Quebec Hydro can get a team out here by skidoo tonight from Natashquan, but it's too cold to skidoo almost 50 kilometers!

We'll see. In the meantime I have to keep a fire going in the furnace, but not so high that it overheats without the fan. Damn!

24 hours and five minutes later, the power is back on. Yes, it was a goddamned cold night! Fucking Quebec Hydro treats this territory like a Third World country - no backup power system for a very isolated area.

"Phillips said winter-weary Americans always blame Canada for cold temperatures, while Canadians usually blame Siberia."

How convenient. Actually, the accelerated climatic change process we have been thrown into by bad energy conservation practices includes cold spells like this for the Northen Hemisphere as ocean currents and other factors are modified. It's not better in Europe: three killed in an avalanche in Scotland, minus 18 in Switzerland this morning, wind storms ripping through Southern France and Spain, snow in Marseille...

Hey, a tropical +1 today.   And sunny.

LOL. Like no other Canadian city (hello, Montreal?) has any experience dealing with snow. Must be the new Renee Zellweger movie.

London calling: Winnipeg mayor go-to man for snowed-under Brits
 

This saturday, the weatherman is promising +5 and rain, but sunday dips back to below zero again.  Good thing-- one of my daughter's and I are going to go looking for deer and coyotes in the Pond Mills area Sunday.  I'd rather it be on the minus side of zero for that.  There's also a few boggy places we don't normally have access to in warm weather that we should be able to have a look at-- unless the snow is too deep.

lol, tommy, almost tmi...

melting melting here, been +8 or higher, going down to only 0 at night.

The rain from the wet coast is passing us by, watched it off in the distance over the mountain tops, whirling and swirling shades of black, grey and white, beyond the blue edge, while speeding ever eastward.

Someone is going to get some snow in the east from that system.