When freezing is warm

It certainly looks as though we're in the thick of winter now. We're all decked out in our new winter gear (still no snow shoes though), and life in a seriously cold environment is not anywhere near as harsh as we thought it would be. Except for a day here and there, the temperature hasn't gotten over zero for the past couple of weeks now. What's even worse, when it's zero outside, it actually feels warm!

It only feels cold when it's -15 outside, which is our best so far. It's funny how in Brisbane, you'd say it's 30 outside, but with 85% humidity to truly express how unpleasant the weather is. Well they have an equivalent here, and it's called windchill. When the wind picks up, even though it may be zero outside, the wind can take another 10 degrees off that pretty easily. Then there's something called RealFeel, which takes into account the wind, humidity, precipitation, sunlight and a bunch of other stuff to calculate how it really feels like to be in. For example, tonight, it's forecast to be -4, but because it will be windy with some snow flurries, it will feel like -13. Not great to be out in.

The worst to come will be on Monday. The minimum is forecast to be -15, with the RealFeel at -28. That qualifies as seriously cold in anybody's language. The forecast for that day is "Mostly cloudy, brisk and bitterly cold with a few flurries". Nice. By the way, flurries are a poor excuse for snow, kind of when the snow couldn't quite be bothered falling down. We haven't had a serious dump of snowfall yet, but it should be coming.

Well, the good news is that it's Groundhog Day today! Punxsutawny Phil the groundhog has predicted an early spring this year. We'll just have to wait and see how clever the groundhog is.