Winter in Canada

Most of Canada, with the exception of the Pacific coast, experiences fairly cold winters. There are not many places that don't experience at least -20° C, and many places can expect much colder than that.

All in all, our winter has not been particularily severe. This winter started fairly early. Instead of a prolonged Indian Summer, which we often have, it already got fairly cold in the beginning of November. It did relent for a while though, until it got cold again just before Christmas.

January an February are usually the coldest months, but most of our January was not all that bad, seldom going lower than -20°. Right at the very end, it did get cold, going down to -39° last Wednesday. By Friday it had "warmed" up to -9°, but it didn't last very long. This morning it was back down to -21°.

There is no doubt that the climate has changed, though. It wasn't all that long ago that it was expected to go down to at least -40° every winter, and ever since we moved here from the west coast 10 years ago we have never seen it go down that far.

After first arriving in Canada, I lived in a town next to a large river. In those days, a lot of farms were still without electricity, and farmers would build an "ice house". That consisted of a hole, usually about 2x2x2 Meters dug into the ground. They would go to a nearby lake or river and cut large chunks of ice, place them into the hole, and cover the ice with sawdust or wood shavings. They would build a small building around it, and then when weather was warm, they would dig a hole in the sawdust down to the ice, place whatever was to be kept cool on the ice, and cover it again. Thus they had an energy efficient refrigerator that would often last several years before the ice had to be replaced.

The ice on the river I lived next to would typically get to be more than a meter thick, thick enough for an ice road to be cleared across it, and would be used by large trucks and other equipment. It was also used by farmers in the area to cut ice for the ice house. With the climate what it is today, for whatever reason (I don't want to get political here) apparently there have been winters where the river has not frozen over completely. I can only imagine how much thinner the ice is today, and I guess it's a good thing that pretty much all farms have refrigerators to plug into their house power.

While the temperatures that we still experience every winter sound like severe, and with the "polar vortex" we, and other parts of Canada and the USA have experienced recently, because they have always been expected every winter, and if anything, more severe, we're pretty much prepared for them. Our houses are very well insulated, furnaces are designed to easily heat them, our windows have double or triple panes, we have suitable clothing and foot wear, and todays vehicles are designed to operated in these temperatures. It appears to be a different story in parts of the USA, where they don't usually experience this kind of weather, and they are noth as prepared. For their sake, let's hope that this isn't going to be the norm, or they are going to have to adapt their houses and life style.
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Of course that doesn't mean that our brains aren't affected by the cold, and don't have the odd lapse, like mine this morning. Virtually all vehicles here are equipped with a block heater, that is, a heater in the engine that is plugged, vie an extension cord, to an electrical outlet. Whenever the temperature threatens to be colder than -20°, I plug mine in. This morning I wanted to go for a drive. I started the car and ran it for a while to warm it up a bit, and then drove away. When I returned, not far from home I realized that I had forgotten to unplug the extension cord. It was lying in the middle of the road, with both ends damaged beyond repair from being yanked out when I drove away. Oh well, it's a good thing that they make new ones every day.

Of course even though we know that we'll have winter every year, it doesn't keep us from hoping for an early spring. We often get nice days in the second half of March, and I hope it won't be an exception this year. We're all hoping for a major snowfall before spring, because the fields really need the moisture, and a lot of farms have the water in their ponds and dugouts at dangoursly low levels. Would be so nice to have a big dump of snow just before the spring melt.

Hope you're all enjoying your winter.

Paul