Today’s Toronto weather report:
8:30am it’s only -10C. Not too bad if you bundle up
12:00pm HOLY CRAP IT’S COLD. Also snowing. WHAT THE HELL.
1:00pm meh, it’s cold, but hey, that’s winter in Canada. No big deal.
5:00pm HOLY CRAP HOW CLOSE IS THIS TO ZERO KELVIN AGAIN [shakes fist at Canada Life building’s weather beacon] The temperature is RISING? ?? ARE YOU MAD? ??
Sooo wind chill and humidity fluctuations, yeah. Happy to be home.
In August, I was at the Minnesota State Fair and walked by the International Wolf Center kiosk. Say, I’ve never been there, I could visit on my 50th Birthday. Signed up for a cabin and a road trip.
Problems:
It’ll be great! I used to go winter camping up there around New Years when I was younger, and the animals are still out and all. One year, we even saw a bald eagle when it was 20 or so below.
Happy birthday!
Will nobody get up a petition to provide bald eagles with woolly hats in winter?
The women’s march did. It’ll be easier to tell them from hawks or vultures when they’re backlit this year.
I never knew I needed this
In other bird-related news, it’s cold enough in Calgary to bring the penguins indoors.
The subject of this thread is cold weather. Stay on topic.
Forecasters are expecting the storm to become a so-called “bomb cyclone” because its pressure is predicted to fall so fast, an indicator of explosive strengthening. The storm could rank as the most intense over the waters east of New England in decades at this time of year. While blizzard conditions could paste some coastal areas, the most extreme conditions will remain well out over the ocean.
speaking of which, the weather could dampen outrage when Trump fires Mueller.
I did a ride at 8F Tuesday morning around 6AM, early because that was the coldest, I wanted to be out then and try that. (Have I mentioned I’m a cold weather person living in the southeast and so feel lucky when it’s cold because I never get enough and have to soak it in when it’s here?) It was no big deal, and I couldn’t tell any difference from being out at 21F. I layered up exactly the same, and all I added this time was some lotion on exposed parts of my face, cheeks nose and some forehead, with everything else covered by outerwear. NBD if you have the right gear.
Just like before, I started off way too cold, and braked my speed on the first long downhill because damn that air was cold, like someone snapping rubber bands on my face, but finished up sweating and way too hot, wishing I could strip off a couple layers, except after ten minutes of rearranging gear I’d have been all cold again. Anyway, it was nice.
That’s exactly the issue I had this past week: I was visiting family and friends in the Mid-Atlantic region, which does not normally even get snow, so they’re not prepared. The homes I stayed in all had heat pumps instead of furnaces. A heat pump merely moves around whatever warm air might happen to be in the home. The colder it gets outside, the colder the home gets. I was sleeping in a down puffer jacket with the hood on, that’s how cold it was INSIDE THE HOUSES and under multiple layers of covers.
I’m actually warmer now that I’m back in Chicago, because 1) I’ve got all my winter gear here and 2) every building by law has a furnace to actually create warm air when it’s cold. What a novel concept.
It was cold.
C’est quoi, cette merde blanche?
Un petit lapin mignon (or other small mammal) picked up by an owl. That isn’t my picture, but I once came across a similar story in the snow.
edit: It was cold.
Technically this is not correct. Heat pumps are supposed to extract heat from the outside, usually soil or underground water, and use it to warm a smaller volume of air to a comfortable temperature, and then circulate it. It often seems backwards but the thermodynamics do work. The idea is that the soil temperature in which the pipes are buried is higher than the air temperature, and you can use this heat difference to power a heat engine.
However, the number of correctly and suitably installed heat pumps is quite small. After I saw someone install one and have trouble with it for years, I decided not to. They ended up with a humungous 17kW wood burner in the middle of the house, and it was still cold when it went below 0C.
Indeed the thermodynamics are sound – it’s like an air conditioner in reverse (and IIRC it just reverses the cycle in the summer). I’ve heard that another problem is that even when working correctly the air coming out of the vents is only marginally warmer than the air in the house, so it doesn’t feel as warm as hot air pumped out by a furnace. The air is moving like a breeze so feels cold. Some systems have an auxiliary small furnace that only comes on during really cold weather.
Mine has basically that, an auxiliary electric heater which runs on days like today.
