It's even cold here–I mean, not what natives consider cold, but something that people who live in actual cold places might admit is somewhat chilly, if they were out in the wind and not wearing heavy parkas and such.
But don't you love that phrase "polar vortex"?
Must be all that global warmening.
It’s freezing here. Hobart’s climate is generally cooler than Houston’s by a long way, but it was rarely as cold as this.
It really annoys the warming/changing crowd when you say things like that–“Weather is not climate!”, which is true, but of course they do it, too. Katrina and a few other hurricanes around the same time were held up as proof to the “deniers.”
On the other hand, it is practically balmy in Anchorage and Antarctica. So let us not dismiss the theory so quickly, though perhaps it should be renamed “Global Fuck Up”. And yes, I love the “Polar Vortex”; sounds like a villain from a superhero movie.
Yeah, it does. Or some mega-disaster phenomenon.
I wasn’t dismissing the theory. I’m more or less agnostic about it. I was only talking about the very selective picking and choosing of specific weather events like this freeze to support one side or the other.
I think it’s pretty lame that they get all alarmed about any warm event and are dismissive of any cold event – although isn’t that covered now by “climate change”?
I’m skeptical of the theory myself.
I’m willing to believe there has been some warming. I’m very skeptical of the apocalyptic predictions about the consequences.
I see that it is 19 degrees in Mobile this morning. You’re right, that is actual cold weather. Of course it is 10 below here, with wind chills predicted at minus 40. And I will be out in it all day. Not that that mitigates your suffering, but it may give you some perspective as you shiver…
According to the thermometer here at my house, it’s only 23. (That’s about -5C, for you foreigners.) It never seems to get quite as cold here as the reports say, which I guess is either because of the proximity to the water or a problem with my thermometer. And the wind seems to have died down. I think this was to have been the coldest night.
I was wondering whether you were going to have to work in the worst of this. My sympathy. I’ve experienced temperatures that low only two or three times in my life, in north Alabama, and it is a different matter altogether.
It is -9F here in Pittsburgh with wind chills in the -30F range. Coldest it’s been in 20 years. Yet because there’s been very little snow it’s actually not been particularly problematic so far, at least as far as getting around is concerned. Now if one’s car breaks down somewhere that’s a different story.
I was thinking about that as I left for work. Although it’s pretty cold, I don’t bundle up that much, because I’m not going to be out in it that much. But if my car were to break down…it wouldn’t be life-threatening, as it might where you are, but it would sure be miserable.
The pipes on our washer froze this morning. First time since we moved to this warmer climate (Minneapolis to Milwaukee). In order to thaw it I vented the dryer into the laundry room, moved our space heater into the laundry room, and put a pot of boiling water under the pipes. It worked.
When I woke up it was -15 F. = -25 C.
Yesterday we did that thing where we threw boiling water in the air to see it turn into a cloud of ice crystals. We also blew bubbles, which froze, then shattered like glass.
I’ve been a little surprised to hear several local people on Facebook this morning saying their pipes froze, especially the one who lives pretty near the water, like I do. I didn’t expect it to be cold enough for long enough for that to happen. But I left a little trickle of water running on our outside faucets just to be safe.
I would like to see those bubbles. I started to say “post a video” but that wouldn’t really capture it.
They made driving illegal here, for yesterday and down to lunch time today. I’m that shallow, that around 2 pm today I was at the supermarket getting some milk then getting my nails done. At the nail parlour, everyone stayed right until their polish was dry enough to put their gloves back on. One absolutely could not walk so far as from the supermarket to the car* without gloves on. It’s maybe a little less bad than yesterday in terms of the temperature on the thermometres, but it feels as cold. I know, because I walked into the office yesterday to get some documents for a grant application. I have certainly never been outside in such cold in my life. It felt quite different to even the worst cold I’ve ever experienced. It was like being at the South Pole. One of my colleagues called it ‘inhuman’ and that was on Saturday.
I was about to say “and you’re not even in one of the coldest places.” But you are. At least according to Google’s quickie weather, Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Minneapolis are all in the 3-7F range, while you’re at -1. Not that much difference, of course, but still surprising. I’m slightly surprised to hear you say it’s worse than the worst. I would have thought living in Europe you’d have had as bad.
I meant to get gas for the car Sunday evening, because I knew I’d have to within a couple of days and that it would be cold then, and I hate to fill up the car in the cold. Well, I forgot, of course, and ended up having to do it on the way home tonight. It was cold but I didn’t think it was as cold as it apparently was: I decided to clean my windshield, and the cleaning stuff–mostly water, obviously–froze on the glass before I could wipe it all off. This is in the very deep, can’t hardly get much deeper, South.
We were down to 13 to 15 below on Monday and Tuesday
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/d2ce171f57024a64bdaaaaa5d58d6657/IN–Deep-Freeze-Indiana
It’s remarkably difficult to find evidence of the weather as it was two days ago. But certainly well below -1!
11 below is minus 24 degrees in our temperature charts. Not in England in my life time, I don’t think! Maybe the year the Thames froze over …
Here’s a little story. We walked to Mass yesterday morning. The chapel is about 3 blocks away. When we went in, I took some holy water, then went to my seat. I touched the tab on the zipper of my coat. My finger, still wet with holy water, froze to the tab!
I’m not making this up.
I decide to forbear licking a fence post.
The good part of it is that it feels warmer today. So today is a ‘warmer’ day, instead of being the coldest day in my three years in Indiana!
Clearly the worst is over here. I just spent the entire morning and lunch hour in a meeting and it’s noticeably warmer now, well over freezing.
That’s a bit scary, Robert. As for the fence post, there was a story in the news yesterday about a girl–10 or 12 years old, I think–who took it into her head to touch her tongue to a flagpole. She was somewhat the worse for it.
Never saw -11/-24 in England? That’s really surprising to me, because at least a few times in my lifetime it got that cold in north Alabama. I remember ca 1980 dealing with a car that wouldn’t start when the temp was -8F/-22C. Just goes to show what the Gulf Stream can do, I guess.
It’s supposed to be in the 30s here tomorrow, the 40s on Friday, then up to 50 on Saturday. Go figure.
My son is in England right now. He hasn’t mentioned the weather, although most of the pics tend to show cloudy.
Maclin; you may want to check this out:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_latitude
In which you will see that, for example, Plymouth, in England, is way south of Sault Ste Marie (pronounced “Soo Saint Marie” for you non-Michiganders) in the Upper Peninsula. The Gulf Stream moderates the climate in the British Isles to a ridiculous degree. Extreme temperatures are an oddity there, instead of a normal part of life, like in, especially, the Upper Midwestern USA. It is kind of mind-boggling how far north a lot of mild climates are, especially in Ireland and England.
One could make the point that this has affected the American character in many ways…
Funny you should mention that, as I was just thinking about it on the way home from work, and wondering if Europeans realize how awful their climate should be, based on their latitude, from our point of view. Another item: the two locations in south and north Alabama where I’ve experienced, respectively, sub-freezing and sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures, are at roughly the same latitudes as, respectively, Cairo and Beirut. The latitudes of the Scandinavian countries are in far northern Canada on this continet, barely habitable by most people’s standards.
Dan, in my three years here (I arrived on 26 December 2010), I have become convinced that the American character is formed through and through by the extreme climate. It is not just the very cold winters – I myself find the summers almost unbearable in their heat. One can get away from the cold but the intense heat is inescapable. I remember the look of pity and slight alarm when I told the head of department (‘chair’) that it was ‘very hot’ in June. He was thinking, you wait for July and August.
I loved the cool and rainy Aberdeen climate. It was perfect for writing books. But there were no Catholics there to teach, and teaching Catholics is my job.
Mind you, my little sister, moving here and marrying on her 16th birthday in December 1995 (yes that’s my teenage niece playing Brahms in the video I put on facebook) wrote today that a walk last night in NYC was the coldest experience in her life. And that’s after living here for 18 years.
Daniel, I love that list of cities by latitude! Thanks.
Wait. Your sister got married on her sixteenth birthday? I had some third cousins in southern Alabama, not far from where Mac lives, what got married at thirteen, but that was in the 40s. Maybe she needs some extreme weather. Just to wake up.
We pay for our mild winters with terrible summers. I’ve never really understood how people farmed here when farming meant very hard physical labor for many hours a day in summer.
Not only are midwestern-northeastern winters tend toward the brutal, but the summers are, as Grumpy says, pretty extreme compared to European ones. I remember for some odd reason a remark by W.H. Auden–maybe in a poem–about the heat in NYC, and noting that it was at the latitude of Madrid, which I guess represented the torrid south to him. The big difference between our summers and those further north is less the temperature than the length of time those temperatures hang around.
There is a passage in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories where Watson brags of his ability to withstand heat: “I had been in India, so a thermometer of 80 was nothing to me.” As if 80 was hot…
And as for American climate at large, we also have Alpine-class mountains, vast deserts, and steppes.
80 is really hot in England. Of course sometimes we get a blistering week up in the 90s. But never in my fifteen years in Aberdeen. I don’t even know if it got to 80! I will never cease to miss those beautiful cool summers…
Lots of people on Facebook are talking about ‘The Long Hard Winter’ and how pioneers in the 19th century made it through these winters. I too often wonder now how they survived the summers. They like us could bundle up during the winter. But they had absolutely no way of keeping the heat out or down. Mind you, I don’t agree with those who are beating up on themselves or modern people, and saying ‘we cannot cope like they coped in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books’. Those people coped because they had to. We don’t have to. There’s no morality in it.
Dan, take a look at my niece playing Brahms. My sister and her husband raised three good kids, despite starting young. The eldest is at a top music conservatory and the two younger teenage boys seem like good guys.
As if 80 was hot…
80 is almost pleasant. It is certainly very pleasant after months on end of temps over 90 and often over 100.
I’ve decided that the USA’s climate is simply extreme all round.
An average summer maximum in our part of Tasmania is about 68 (my favourite!) and an average winter maximum is at least over 50. It rarely goes below 32 in Hobart and rarely over 100.
I remember very very fondly the one summer I spent in northern Europe–those long cool clear twilights…sigh…one day I’ll get back.
I don’t understand how they survived, literally, the winters. I mean, as in not die. I’m thinking of the Indians in New England, Canada, the Great Plains. The Eskimos have a means of creating well-enclosed spaces that they can heat. But…tents? In a blizzard? And maybe this is just my ignorance, but the pictures you see of them do not show anything like the head-to-toe furs that the Eskimos used.
I wondered why you had posted that somewhat random-seeming video. I’ll take a listen.
No, I’ll correct that. Overnight temps in Hobart go down to about 28 often enough, but it’s not normally that temperature by the time people are up and about.
I don’t understand how they survived, literally, the winters. I mean, as in not die.
I don’t understand it either. And how did they, and the Eskimos for that matter, prevent their eyeballs freezing???
Hobart’s climate sounds similar to northern California’s, generally envied by the rest of the country.
Louise: An average summer maximum in our part of Tasmania is about 68 (my favourite!) and an average winter maximum is at least over 50. It rarely goes below 32 in Hobart and rarely over 100.
Tasmania sounds pretty much like GB.
Every thing climate related here seems extreme and violent. For instance, naturally in Scotland sometimes it rains hard all day, and indeed for several days in a row. But when it rains here, it’s like being machine gunned with rain for ten minutes.
One of my colleagues had a word for the temperatures of Monday and Tuesday here – he said, unworldly
Living here, it’s easy to see why the north American Indians didn’t have much of a settled civilization. It would have been impossible without at least 18th and 19th century European technologies.
In the pictures the Indians are always on horse back, going somewhere. Maybe they migrated south in the winter.
I did read, though, that way back when, maybe not in the 18th century, but many centuries back, there were large North American Indian cities. I read about it with some interest when I was writing the commentary on the 1 Samuel. I was interested in what we know about bronze age and iron age civilizations, and how we know it.
Hmm, never heard of large cities, but then like I said this is not something I have more than superficial knowledge of. I’ve only heard of sort of large villages. Very interesting if true.
I’ve never really given much thought, apart from temperatures, to the differences in European and N American weather, but now that you mention it, yeah, I guess ours is pretty extreme. Do tornadoes ever happen in Europe? Hurricanes? Ship-wrecking gales, yes, but I’ve never heard of anything that devasted everything on land.
Lots of indians lived in houses or other constructed buildings. The plains Indians lived in teepees. They had fires in them. That is why there was a vent flap at the top. There were no horses in North American until the Spaniards came.
Yeah, I knew the teepees had fires, but still, in a blizzard…? Duh, I should have known that about the horses.
That’s quite remarkable. I didn’t know they had no horses.
It’s also remarkable that they became so adept at handling horses. I seem to recall reading that the Spanish were impressed.
Tasmania’s climate probably is quite similar to GB, with less rainfall I think.
The rest of Australia thinks our climate is unbearably cold, but I’m really not into the heat.
That’s interesting, Maclin. Time to look up more climate info on wikipedia for GB and northern CA…
Hobart does indeed look pretty similar to San Francisco, although SF looks even more moderate.
Aberdeen has a similar climate for sure, just a little on the cooler side.
London’s climate is closer still, I think – at least as far as the average temps go.
I’m surprised really, because London is at 51N and Hobart is at 42S.
Interestingly, Paris and London have similar annual rainfalls to Hobart – about 24 inches.
Paris is warmer in summer and cooler in winter than London, which in turn is warmer/cooler than Hobart in the respective seasons. And SF is even more moderate. All very pleasant. I’m enjoying this. 🙂
24 inches? I would have thought London was rainier than that. Near-desert conditions by my standards: Mobile is the rainiest city in the country with an average around 5 1/2 feet. It doesn’t rain that much in Fairhope, though–the rain tends to bypass us. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not.
Yes, it’s surprisingly dry. I suspect other parts of GB are more rainy.
But 5.5 feet is a lot of rain! I think that’s a good thing.
Hey, look what I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate
I think that’s cool. 🙂
Climate and weather are fascinating. I’m always struck, whenever I start thinking about it, by, on the one hand, the very narrow range of temperatures, cosmically speaking, where human life can exist, and the even narrower range where it’s comfortable, and, on the other hand, the ability of mankind to adapt to miserable conditions outside that comfort range.
I agree. I thank God He gave us air-con. 🙂
Light On Dark Water 
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