Monday, February 16, 2009

Weather: It's Gone Crazy

I've had a big couple of months on the weather side of things. Yeah, you read right, I'm blogging about the weather. I have now sunk to the bottom of the conversation barrel and dragged the Internet down with me ... welcome.

Anyhow, it's with reason I mention my weather experiences as since the start of December 08 I think I've managed to live through the entire gamut of weather extremes from -40C in Canada to +47C in Australia ... all within a month of each other.
I'm not really sure which is less livable to be honest. 
The -40C is ridiculously cold ... it's bad enough that when it hits +5C, it's usually good form to just stay indoors and not worry about going out too much, but imagine this, last Aussie winter I whinged and moaned about how cold it was when it hit -2C overnight while I was at work. Several months later when the temperature 'rose' to -5C, I was out in my jeans and shirt because it was such "a nice day out".
The -40C stuff will literally steal your breath from you, but then again, the stuff over 40C will do something similar, but at least when its hot, your snot doesn't freeze to the inside of your nostrils and hurt (I know, it sounds funny, but it isn't when it first happens)
It's still my opinion that the human body copes much better with extreme heat than it does the extreme cold. Lets face it sunburn is a bitch for a few days, but browns off and ends up, in the most cases being a pretty nice suntan. Frostbite makes things black and fall off ... yeah, that's just never cool.
 That's the extreme stuff of course and while I'm sure the residents of Vancouver would disagree that their cold snap was extreme, the fact that they got crazy amounts of snow over the holiday season was kinda rare, much like the 11 day heatwave we had here in Broken Hill (when I say heatwave too, I don't mean the usual 3 or 4 days over 36, I'm talking 11 days over 40C ... which is freakin oppressive)
Of course outside of the weather I've been ion the middle of you have the US in the grip of the coldest winter in years as well as Queensland under water with flooding and of course the bush fires that have laid waste to large tracts Victoria (which wasn't entirely weather related thanks to an arsonist or two, but was still fuelled on by a crazy heatwave)


1 comment:

sdelatovic said...

While swimming in the pool at 9pm in a refreshing novelty, it is not worth spending every other waking moment lying prone on the floor under a fan, wet towel and all of your seat.