Tem­per­a­ture in Ottawa on Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 23, 2013

We’ve been going through a very cold spell in Ottawa. I know, it’s Jan­u­ary and this kind of weather is expected but I was still shocked when I read the tem­per­a­ture on the ther­mome­ter out­side that morn­ing: — 30°C.

And that is with­out the wind-chill factor.

Of course, since I’m now a true Cana­dian, I then pro­ceeded on going out for a walk, as usual. I bun­dled up well: win­ter coat, gloves, a scarf cov­er­ing my mouth and nose, and I was just fine.

Okay, my nose was very red when I got home and it took me five min­utes to feel my fin­gers again. And a hot shower to warm up.

But I can brag about it. “Oh yeah, bit chilly today… meh, went for a walk.”

Seri­ously, you know it’s too cold—even for Canada—when:

1)      You can’t spot a sin­gle per­son wear­ing shorts and t-shirt. Yes, believe it or not, there is always a Cana­dian some­where who is rock­ing the shorts and t-shirt look when tem­per­a­tures are hov­er­ing around zero degree. When you see Cana­di­ans wear­ing thick win­ter jack­ets, you know it’s actu­ally cold.

2)      If you take off your gloves for just a cou­ple of seconds—say, to find your keys in your bag—your fin­gers instantly become numb and painful.

3)      Your hair freezes. And so do your tears.

4)      The mail­box is frozen shut. Feel free to ignore the bills inside, after all, you did try to pry it open with the keys, right?

5)      Even the rab­bits and the squir­rels out­side look cold. And the guy walk­ing his huskies on the bike path behind our place men­tioned his dogs didn’t want to go out because of the cold—I mean, we are talk­ing huskies here, a dog breed that orig­i­nated in north-eastern Siberia!

6)      The touch screen on your iPod Nano doesn’t respond (may also be caused by frozen fingers—see point #2).

7)      If the tem­per­a­ture gets any colder, it won’t show on the thermometer.

8)      There is a lineup at the Flight Cen­ter out­let in the mall. It screams “get-me-out-of-frozen-hell-fast”.

9)      You con­sider wear­ing another pair of socks on top of the two pairs you are already wearing.

10)   You can’t leave the gro­ceries in the car because they may freeze.

Some­one please, make win­ter go away!