Heat (or Cold)! It's All Relative.

The post below was written a couple of years ago in the summer, and never posted. However, I was reminded of it by a conversation I had yesterday. It was around 0 C (32 F), when I stopped at the corner store. The clerk was outside having a smoke. As we walked into the store, she exclaimed, 'It's so cold!'  

As I relate below, it's all relative to what you've experienced. This is why I can tease my friends, like Mariah, by asking 'What would you do if it actually got cold?' And I can tease my friends in Alberta, like Sarah, when they complain about the 'heat' by asking, 'And, what would you do if it actually got hot?'

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My dear friend, Sarah, in Edmonton posted a bit ago on Facebook urging people to stay inside because it was supposed to get to 32 C (90 F) today. I came back, teasing her that it was already 32 here, is supposed to get to 34 (93), and I was going to walk down town. She said I was crazy!

It got me thinking about peoples' reactions to temperature. I have lived on the Great Plains/Prairies of North America all my life. Most of it has been spent in the Midwest of the US, in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, but with a few years in Edmonton, Alberta. I have experienced temperatures from wind chills of well below 40 (C or F doesn't matter at minus 40. That's where the scales meet!), up to 48 C (118 F). I've actually worked in a hotter environment, but those are the ambient temperatures I've experienced.

I once texted a friend in Kansas City, Missouri when it was minus 40 in Edmonton and told her the temperature. She asked how I could even go outside? I told her you learn to dress for it.

On the evening of 12 December 2009, I was at the Dockside Pub in Edmonton. When the pub closed at 02.00 on Sunday morning, 13 December, I walked the few blocks home. It was cold, but I didn't think it was anything exceptional. The next day, I walked into the pub. Everyone was talking excitedly, and one person asked me if I had heard about last night. I was then informed that the night before, when I walked home, Edmonton had been the coldest place in North America and the second coldest place on earth! We had been beaten for the honour of coldest by a three man weather station in Northern Siberia!

On the other hand, in the summer of 1980, I lived in Wichita, Kansas. We had a two week spell where daytime highs were in the middle 40s C (114-118 F) and the overnight 'lows' were around 35 C (95F). My now brother-in-law and I went to Colorado to escape the heat. It was hot there, with daytime highs around our night time 'lows'. People were apologising for the heat. We just told them they should come back to Kansas with us!