blow job (a boring post about the weather)
Friday was crazy. Crazy, I say!
I was out of town on business in Ontario on Thursday. My flight back to Montreal was supposed to leave at 6:00pm. At 9:00, we were just taking off, after sitting in a two-and-a-half hour line to get de-iced. The airport was down to one runway for takeoff and landing. It was most rediculous. We flew an hour and a half and landed in freezing rain. Then, someone took our cab, stranding us out in the middle of nowhere for an additional half hour.
I was hard pressed to keep my peppy-young-professional face on, but I think I managed.
Perhaps.
Friday, I woke up to -10 (probably closer to -30 with windchill). I almost bit it on the stairs leaving my apartment, and then went off to work. At around noon, I looked out the window and saw one of the lamp posts outside springing around in the wind like it was made of rubber. Someone mentioned that winds were up towards 110kph. Then, the roof of the building next door started falling apart, and pieces of it blew into the parking lot and took out a few cars. The windows in one of the buildings actually blew out, and security sent everyone who sits within twenty feet of a window home early. Paid. (So not only do they get to sit by a window, but they get to go home! Grr.) The city is now pretty thoroughly covered in ice. The wind blew anything resembling something fluffy or snowish away, and now it's just rock-hard ice. Everywhere. There's no slush by the curbs, and the bus makes a shattering noise as it crunches to a halt. Shuffling down the street as fast as I could, I'd occasionally kick a loose piece of ice, which would skitter along the rest of the ice, making a sharp noise like glass on glass. This kind of ice, it's something I've not seen outside of Quebec. I'm sure it exists in places like Indiana, Manitoba, Russia, and Siberia, or any other barren wasteland, but it's different than the stuff that comes out of the freezer.
It's funny, to think that my freezer is actually heating up the stuff inside it.
I moved to Quebec in 1999. I remember my first Montreal winter, and my first real cold day. We had an 8:30 broomball game, and my roommate had to pick up her shinpads from the hockey rink. I remember hearing her pants making this strange snapping sound as she walked. It took me a while to figure out that they were frozen. This time of year, it's cold on a level that people who haven't lived it can't understand. As you breathe (if you were dumb enough not to cover your face up to the bottom of your sunglasses) your breath moves away from your body, and then falls, as the moisture in it freezes. If you were dumb enough not to wear sunglasses, your eyes freeze, and you'll have to turn away from the wind for a few seconds and blink a few times to get them to unfreeze. You'll get a strange feeling in your nose and throat (mucus and snot freezing) and a strange taste in your mouth (ice, as the spit on your tongue freezes). As you shuffle along, raging cursewords in your head, your thighs will get cold and turn bright red within a few minutes. The soles of your shoes will freeze right away. Beer, chilled on the back porch, is frosty cold in under ten minutes and starting to crystallize in twenty.
It's damn cold these days.
I was out of town on business in Ontario on Thursday. My flight back to Montreal was supposed to leave at 6:00pm. At 9:00, we were just taking off, after sitting in a two-and-a-half hour line to get de-iced. The airport was down to one runway for takeoff and landing. It was most rediculous. We flew an hour and a half and landed in freezing rain. Then, someone took our cab, stranding us out in the middle of nowhere for an additional half hour.
I was hard pressed to keep my peppy-young-professional face on, but I think I managed.
Perhaps.
Friday, I woke up to -10 (probably closer to -30 with windchill). I almost bit it on the stairs leaving my apartment, and then went off to work. At around noon, I looked out the window and saw one of the lamp posts outside springing around in the wind like it was made of rubber. Someone mentioned that winds were up towards 110kph. Then, the roof of the building next door started falling apart, and pieces of it blew into the parking lot and took out a few cars. The windows in one of the buildings actually blew out, and security sent everyone who sits within twenty feet of a window home early. Paid. (So not only do they get to sit by a window, but they get to go home! Grr.) The city is now pretty thoroughly covered in ice. The wind blew anything resembling something fluffy or snowish away, and now it's just rock-hard ice. Everywhere. There's no slush by the curbs, and the bus makes a shattering noise as it crunches to a halt. Shuffling down the street as fast as I could, I'd occasionally kick a loose piece of ice, which would skitter along the rest of the ice, making a sharp noise like glass on glass. This kind of ice, it's something I've not seen outside of Quebec. I'm sure it exists in places like Indiana, Manitoba, Russia, and Siberia, or any other barren wasteland, but it's different than the stuff that comes out of the freezer.
It's funny, to think that my freezer is actually heating up the stuff inside it.
I moved to Quebec in 1999. I remember my first Montreal winter, and my first real cold day. We had an 8:30 broomball game, and my roommate had to pick up her shinpads from the hockey rink. I remember hearing her pants making this strange snapping sound as she walked. It took me a while to figure out that they were frozen. This time of year, it's cold on a level that people who haven't lived it can't understand. As you breathe (if you were dumb enough not to cover your face up to the bottom of your sunglasses) your breath moves away from your body, and then falls, as the moisture in it freezes. If you were dumb enough not to wear sunglasses, your eyes freeze, and you'll have to turn away from the wind for a few seconds and blink a few times to get them to unfreeze. You'll get a strange feeling in your nose and throat (mucus and snot freezing) and a strange taste in your mouth (ice, as the spit on your tongue freezes). As you shuffle along, raging cursewords in your head, your thighs will get cold and turn bright red within a few minutes. The soles of your shoes will freeze right away. Beer, chilled on the back porch, is frosty cold in under ten minutes and starting to crystallize in twenty.
It's damn cold these days.
posted by M at 10:19 PM
1 Comments:
Where is your God now, Al Gore??
You really can't say France "lost" Canada when you take this into account. There is really no point to living in such a place. Even the Vikings could only remain there for a couple of years - and if the Vikings won't live there then who in their right mind would?
In Podunk it is a balmy 31 degrees with a 60% chance of snow showers.
-Suley
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