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.

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.

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 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...

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

It's supposed to be in the 30s here tomorrow, the 40s on Friday, then up to 50 on Saturday. Go figure.

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...

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.

Daniel, I love that list of cities by latitude! Thanks.

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...

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.

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.

Now, I ask you, wouldn't you love a climate like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart#Climate

Hobart's climate sounds similar to northern California's, generally envied by the rest of the country.

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.

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.

That's quite remarkable. I didn't know they had no horses.

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...

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. :)

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.