It thinks it is -25°C. In Yorkshire. During the daytime. Bloody crappy Korean tin pot car, I'm sure it's lying to me.
-13F? That isn't fun. Can you get corroboration anywhere? Remember when banks used to have a big display out front with the time and temperature? The other day it seemed cold and nasty and I was trying to figure out how cold it was. Had to go home and look at the thermometer.
It is really cold, literally colder than I can ever remember, but I'm sure it's only something like -10°C out. My car's just being a fadge.
Where I grew up, -30F (with windchills dropping the perceived temp further) were not uncommon. Why they scheduled Christmas (and thus visiting the family) in the dead of winter is beyond me.
Anyways, back on topic, the premise and the thread title make me think this could be an entertaining TV show. Sort've a "Knight Rider" reboot. Only instead of a shadowy loner, fighting crime in a black Trans Am, it would be a British Realtor hottie, fighting...I dunno, whatever Brit birds fight...in a... Kia? Hyundai? That is either incompetent and/or a compulsive liar. Ricky Gervais could produce it.
This cold snap better not give me leathery skin due to being out and about for festivities, otherwise I'm suing Jesus.
Celine Dion is from the frozen land of Canadia. She doesn't have leathery sk...OK, maybe she does. I dunno.
My car is prone to the infirmities of middle-to-old age. All kinds of ominous knocks and rattles inside and out, deteriorating skin, and unintended leakage of various fluids on a consistent basis.
Jesus was a Jew! You want to take on a host of Heavenly Lawyers? Anyway, Volpone (maybe Marso) spent much time in Northern Wisconsin. He isn't kidding! Minus 30 farenheit wouldn't surprise anyone. The lakes were frozen thick enough to drive a car on from around (give or take a couple weeks) 15 December to 15 March. You can walk on the ice from 1 December to 1 April.
It only gets bitterly, brutally cold every couple years--usually the last week of January/first week of February. When I was living with my Aunt in Minneapolis you left the cabinet doors under the kitchen sink (that was on an outside wall) open and kept the faucets dripping to keep the pipes from freezing. If you parked your car outside it wouldn't start from the cold (up there you can buy a car with an engine block plug to plug your car in and keep the battery warm) and if you parked it in the garage the door froze shut. That year you could fill a plastic cup with hot tap water, walk out on the porch and throw the water into the air and POOF! it exploded into snow.
What I am about to tell you is not BS. We moved to the Red River Valley of Minnesota in 1996, over the summer. I loved it. I adored it - perfect weather. The Red River Valley goes up quite a ways into Canada and, other than International Falls, is the coldest place in the 48 states. That winter, we got an early snow fall which was quite substantial. Then, it started to get really, really freaking cold - all the time. The number best used to explain how cold it got is easy to remember - it got -40 more than 40 nights that winter. Even with the harshness of that winter, in the middle of it everyone tried to pass it off as mild. "This isn't bad," they'd tell me. "Last year, wind chill got to -70. That was so cold they canceled school because they couldn't heat the buses." So, it was cold, and we got more than 10' of snow that winter - which did not melt until it started raining in April. I was coming back from a basketball tournament I had played in in Winona, MN as it rained. There was no thought of a flood yet; the forecast for the river crest was well below the dikes. In my mind, I can still see the perfectly flat fields of Wilkin County that appeared between sections of "the tunnel" as the rain began to fall on them. The tunnel is what we called the roads, since snow was piled up so high on their shoulders. My mom disagreed with me when I told her that "we're gonna flood - there is no place for this water to go." However, flood we did. It is so flat there, and there was so much rain, and 10 feet of snow melting, there was just no where for the water to go. Why do I bring this up? Not to be alarming. I simply want you to know that your community will probably be destroyed in 3-4 months. Just kidding. Cold happens, stay warm!
Dude, Scotland is at a total halt. Bad snow all last week, looked to be melting over the weekend, at 8.30 am it came on and the central belt has taken a dump of about 2feet of snow in the morning. Now that is something that experienced countries can cope with, but the UK with our usual climate isn't use to it. I have literally just walked 8 miles home. Some of the scenes I have saw tonight are unbelievable.
HA! I used to do that in Fairbanks. We also got "ice fog". Once again, it must be about -30 for this. The car exhaust won't dissipate and forms a head-high fog all around heavily trafficked areas. And if you ever piss outside and your moist nether regions touch the cold metal of your zipper for more than a few seconds....you'll find out who your real buddies are, let's put it that way.
Two other things. OK, some other things: First off, in that kind of weather, the Twin Cities has chemicals they put on the roads that will melt the ice. (And just think what they can do to the underside of your car.) Second, in that weather you get "black ice" during your rush hour--especially in the morning. As people are sitting at freeway on-ramps, idling and waiting to get into traffic, their exhaust melts the ice and snow and creates a completely invisible layer of ice. The road surface looks dry and clear but it actually has a fine layer of insanely slippery ice on it. Last, Portland is completely unprepared for snow too. In the Twin Cities and such places they can deal with this because they do alternate side parking and have an army of speed-fueled snowplow drivers just waiting to get out and clear the streets. I think Portland has maybe six plows. And there's no way there's enough space in, say, Northwest to have one side of the street empty for plowing.
This is why it's sort of an advantage to live in a Godforsaken area that has always been cold and will continue to be cold. You always have bad weather, so when it hits people are used to it so nothing is disrupted. It's like farming in Phoenix Arizona. You don't care about a "drought" because it's a desert, so irrigation is already established. You have several huge lakes nearby that have seven years of water in them (if the mountain snowmelt failed to materialize for whatever reason). No rain in Alabama and you are SOL.
Wow. -25C on your car guage? That's usually what I see on the jet's RAT guage when I'm up around 25,000 FT or so. That's cold. I was flying up in MN and around Chicago last week, and I was freezing my balls off. It was the fourth day of the trip before I got down to lower AL for half a day and saw a temp that was above freezing. This is easily the coldest November I remember in a while.
OT - "L.A. Story" has a great earthquake moment, Sarah Jessica Parker never looked better, and how can you not love conversations with a freeway sign?
Someone just sent me a link at home from the BBC about some pub that is at the highest elevation in England, where 8 patrons and 5 staff were snowed in for a week--or something to that effect. Anyone want to dig for it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-11921396 Kirbymoorside -- not too far from me!
We get -30 degree weather for a few weeks here, but nothing like what Saskatchewan and Manitoba get (dheklar and polarslam land). On the plus side, usually crime is reduced at this time because people just don't like to work in -30 degree weather. The exception is home break ins at around Christmas time, when people stupidly put gifts under their tree, unguarded.
