Winter has come back this week with a vengeance, just to remind us that whilst global warming might be a significant concern, there’s more than a little way to go before we start growing palm trees in the streets of Fort McMurray.
All week I’ve been waking up to the sound of the weather report saying happy things like, its currently -31 degrees and we’re going to get to a high of -24! I hate to correct them, but there’s no way that should be called a high.
The temperature first plummeted on Saturday last weekend, when we drove to Edmonton (having avoided the Friday night drive due to a blizzard that was dumping snow and wind all over the province and turning the roads to skating rinks). We navigated the road to Edmonton without incident (and were thankful that much of the drive was in daylight having not left until 7am (The sun rose at 9!). The 6 inch deep snow in the streets of Edmonton was an interesting experience though, with little two wheel drive cars skating their way around the city. Nothing like watching the car next to you at the lights trying to get moving with its rear wheels spinning as the back end of the car slides toward you.
One of the problems that you face when its that cold is that if you choose, like we did, to walk to the shops, you need to layer yourself up with clothes so that you don’t die of exposure getting there. Then of course, once you get inside the shop, they have the heat set to ‘Caribbean’ which means that you have to shed coats and things and carry them around the whole time you’re shopping and kids are so good at carrying their own coats!
The ride home was again uneventful, though there was that morbid fascination with watching the temperature drop on the dash … -20 …. -25 … it was about then that Emily said that she needed to go to the toilet. We were of course in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately she fell asleep and gave us a reprieve. Sam however decided he needed to go. So I told him it was -25 and asked if he could hold on. He assured me that he’d try. Of course half an hour later, Michael too needed to go and Emily had woken up again. Things were desperate so I pulled into a rest stop which happened to have a toilet (We were in the 200km, no services part of the trip). At this point it had plummeted to -30C.
We trooped in to the washroom to find that there were no lights. Fabulous. I happened to have a cigarette lighter in my pocket from starting cooking fires the last time I’d worn it and so used that to give us a faint glimmer with which to work by. It was a miserable little thing and of course, it kept getting too hot for me to sustain, so it was a comical little performance of light, hold …ouch. Light, hold … ouch, Light, hold … ouch! Emily quickly stripped her pants down her legs and sat down, only to quickly stand up again and say “Daddy, could you please get the ice of the seat?” Ahh the joys.
For the rest of the week, we’ve been facing those temperatures and being reminded daily of the little things that that means:
- Within moments, your lips are dry and cracked and you’re looking for that old chapstick you put somewhere last winter.
When your car has been outside all day, you really need to run it for a good 15 minutes before you want to get in because the seats are like frozen lumps of ice
- The LCD display on the car tends to be sluggish and confused for a while until it warms up (apparently the liquid in Liquid Crystal Display starts to suffer).
- When you do sit in the car, your breath not only fogs up the windows but forms ice crystals on the INSIDE of the window
- The tyres of the car are so cold that when you start driving you think you’re on old-fashioned solid rubber tyres and the suspension and all the lubricants squeak and groan as they warm up.
- It suddenly doesn’t matter how bad the thing you put on your head looks as long as it’s warm enough.
- Gloves aren’t just for girls and sissies anymore
- When you take off from the traffic lights you’re surrounded by insta-fog* and have to slow down to avoid hitting the hidden ‘truck in the mist’.
- All is good though, because it is supposed to warm up again (we’ll see) despite the fact that when I woke up this morning I was greeted by the radio happily announcing that its -39 outside right now and we’re heading for a high of -32!
I heard someone say, step outside with a smile on your face today and you’ll be smiling all day ... because your smile will be frozen there and you won’ change it no matter how you feel!
Skiing has been cancelled for the weekend (hell, its off the chart cold), but next week we might get warm enough to get to freezing rain! (See the 17th of December below – the white line is the average for this time of year)
Freezing rain was new one for us this year. Basically it means that it’s warm enough to rain, but cold enough that when it hits the ground, it turns to ice. We’ve seen it once so far this year and the footpaths were literally frozen over with ice, a nice slippery, glassy sheet of ice. It was bad enough that my traction control kicked in getting up the drive way. I’ll be happy if we don’t see more.
For now, the brass monkeys have packed their bags and headed South, sans orbs.
*Insta-fog – That’s what you get when you pump exhaust gases out the back of your car at -30C or so. It’s like an opaque cloud of fog enveloping everything behind you, kind of like the old cartoon black inky clouds that you’d expect to see come out the back of Dick Dastardly’s car in
Wacky Races (yes, showing my age).
