OH CRAP
It’s so cold here that everyone’s burning through power and the grid’s ready to bite it.
We really are Canada’s Texas.
The only things on in our condo right now are my computer and a few lights (we’ve turned the furnace down, but I guess that’s on, too).
Edit: we survived the failure threat! No rolling power outages.
Die another day, Alberta power grid.
NO BUT SERIOUSLY IT’S COLD YO
Oh my god.
OH MY GOD.
So this was the temperature when I headed into campus this morning.
No, I didn’t walk in (though I thought about it, haha). Instead, I took the bus.
Here is the scene from the bus stop in front of our house. Doesn’t the air look frozen?
Anyway. Took the bus in but decided to actually take it down to Brentwood Mall ‘cause I needed groceries. It’s about 0.36 miles from the Fresh Co there to the math building, so I figured walking back to campus after getting groceries wouldn’t be too bad.
Ha.
Have you ever been outside in feels like -53? It’s colder than anything I’d ever experienced, that’s for sure. Like, -40 is cold. But dropping it another 13 degrees? Ouch.
Ouch.
Needless to say, I took the bus home after I was done with work. I was actually surprised at how many students were in my afternoon class given how cold it was.
Edit: there’s ice on the inside of the Kines building doors. Freaking brr.
It’s Cold, Yo
Every year we get like two two-week periods of absolute hellish cold. Usually one of these periods overlaps perfectly with winter break (end of December-ish) and the other happens sometime around he start of Winter semester (mid-January).
We didn’t really have much of a cold snap in December, but HOLY HELL it’s cold right now.
We’re talking “feels like” temps in the -40s.
And it’s just going to get colder of the next few days!
Claudia and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Blood Circulation
So the temperature has tanked here and OH MY GOD I AM SO FREAKING COLD
My hands can’t handle this, yo. My hands can barely handle 40-degree weather, let alone teens or negatives.
I don’t know how I used to go on 15-mile walks in like -15 degrees back in like 2018/2019. I suspect doing so is what’s destroyed my fingers, though. They are SO sensitive to cold now it’s actually kind of scary.
I should probably go to the doctor and see if I actually have Raynaud’s (even though I don’t get the color-changing skin) or if there’s something else going on.
IT’S WINTER, YOU SONS OF BITCHES
TIME FOR SNOW
TIME FOR COLD
TIME FOR ME TO REGRET THE FACT THAT I AM A LIZARD
Gettin’ Mugged
Why the hell does Moscow feel like a swamp right now? This kind of mugginess isn’t normal, is it? I don’t remember it being this muggy in the summers when I lived here, but I may just not be used to it because Calgary is like the driest city ever.
UGH.
UGH
So I had every intention of running a marathon today, but:
1. It got smoky. Like, super smoky. Our scale up here goes from 1 (clean air) to 11+ (you’re going to die if you go outside), and we hit a 9 while I was out running.
2. It’s muggy as all hell. For whatever reason, it’s super humid here today and there’s nothing worse than muggy hell when trying to run.
3. It’s windy as all hell. I’m always down for a little wind while running, but it was obnoxious today.
All these components resulted in a pretty miserable, difficult run that was only 21 miles long.
UGH I hate cutting my distance short, but I also don’t want to get lung damage, so.
I Love the Clouds Here
Look at this cloud exploding over the horizon of the U of C. How freaking cool is that?
YA LIKE SMOKE????
The air quality when I got up to run this morning:
The air quality at the end of my run (about 2.5 hours later):
Yeah, the wildfire smoke blew in QUICKLY. Look at this post-apocalyptic nonsense.
Ugh.
IT’S SUMMER, SUMMER, SUMMER!!!!!
(Well, not technically, but you know what I mean)
Time for another “how am I supposed to care about my present or future when the world is on fire and our generation probably won’t make it to retirement on a survivable planet?”
What’s it going to be this summer, eh?
Ridiculous wildfires?
Crop-destroying, river-draining droughts?
Crippling, month-long heatwaves?
ALL OF THE ABOVE????? ?? ???
???
Edit: Jesus Christ, Phoenix.
Breaking Spring
So Calgary’s XTREME WINTER TEMPERATURES are really good at lining up for when I am on any kind of break – winter break, spring break, whatever.
Don’t believe me?
Take a look at this graph. Can you tell which week is our spring break?
Yup, you got it!
This happens EVERY YEAR. What in the HELL.
Band o’ Cloud
Bro, check out this snazzy band of cloud:
I LOVE the clouds up here. We usually don’t get super interesting ones until the summer (apart from the Chinook arches), but this one is pretty unique.
Brrthday Brr
So it’s been pretty well established over the years that it’s always very cold on my birthday up here in Calgary.
I mean, of course it is, my birthday’s in the winter. But I mean in comparison to the days surrounding my birthday, the birthday day itself is always quite a bit colder than the other days.
And it looks like that’s going to be the case this year, too:
That’s hilarious. There’s a DELIBERATE TEMPERATURE DIVE approaching February 2nd, then it goes back up again.
H I L A R I O U S
WELL THAT FORECAST WAS WRONG
Me: Hey forecast, whatcha got for me?
Forecast: Sunny and calm until 11 AM! :D
Me: Cool! Time to go running.
Forecast: lolololo fuk u have rain
Me: Wait hang on I’ve still got five miles until I get h-
Forecast: FUK U HAVE RAIN
Forecast: HAVE ALL THE RAIN
Forecast: DROWN, LOSER
(It rained a lot on my return run home.)
(I got extremely wet.)
(I think this breaks the record of how wet I’ve gotten on a run.)
(Was super cold, had to shower, then go teach.)
(Ugh.)
STROM
OH GOD IT’S STORMY HERE and I have to go for a run.
We’re on like maximum flood alert because there’s a chance the Bow might get a mega-surge of water from the mountains and from surrounding rainstorms.
Edit from later: that was a super windy run, but no Bow overflow!
April showers? More like April FLASH BLIZZARDS
So remember that run I did on Tuesday in the cold and snow?
Remember how it started snowing partway through the run and I got a little cold, but it actually wasn’t too horrible?
HA.
Buckle up.
So today it wasn’t supposed to start snowing until a little later, and even then, it was only supposed to be light snow.
A skiff, if you will.
It wasn’t supposed to amount to much.
So I leave to go running and it start snowing lightly. I’m like, okay, cool, whatev. This should stop soon. But the closer I got to the trail, the harder it started snowing. And by the time I was ready to start running, there was at least a quarter of an inch on the ground already.
But I’m stubborn as all hell, so I was like screw this, I’mma run.
And so I did.
And it kept snowing.
So I ran through 2.5-3 inches of wet snow. All 15 miles. And it was snowing these big, wet, obnoxious flakes the whole time; I had to take my glasses off about three miles into the run because I kept having to clear the snow off my lenses every thirty seconds or so.
I’m not exaggerating.
The last two miles were the worst, though, because I was back on the busier part of the trail, meaning – even in this garbage weather – there were tracks in the slushy snow which made it EXTRA HARD to get any sort of traction. It was a very slow, annoying two miles.
I got home and was 100% soaking wet.
At least my hat got cleaned, haha.
Brrrrrr
I got snowed on while running this morning and OH MY GOD I got so wet and cold.
You’d think we’d be snow-free near the end of April, right?
WRONG
Ugh.
Y’know what?
It’d be nice if it was WARM during any of my breaks.
Hell, it doesn’t even have to be warm. Just be above -20, please. That’s all I want.
Seriously. I was stuck inside for the WHOLE WINTER BREAK because it was consistently below -30 for like an entire month.
And now? It’s Reading Week and it’s ONCE AGAIN freezing cold out there.
Ugh. I just wanna run/walk outside while I don’t have to worry about getting back in time for lectures.
Rant over.
Yeah, Pretty Much
And -22 is NOT that cold of a temperature for Calgary. Just sayin’.
One thing can be said about Calgary’s weather:
It’s never a half-assed attempt.
Is it winter? A WHOLE WEEK OF -30 DEGREE TEMPS!
Is it a snowstorm? A WHOLE FOOT OF SNOW PLUS SNOW DRIFTS!
Is it a windstorm? JUST KIDDING, TORNADO, BITCHES!
So today it rained, which means it rained like this:
The video doesn’t really capture the intensity. This also went on for like half an hour. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it rain so much for so long.
I don’t mind rain if I don’t have to be out in it. I didn’t have to be out in this, so HOORAY RAIN!
Hey Pacific and Inland Northwest!
Y’all enjoying this heatwave? Are you having a super good time trying not to die?
Well, get used to it. This is our future. Summers will be this hot or hotter, these heatwaves will become so normal they won’t even call them “heatwaves” anymore, there will be droughts and general water shortages, and everything will be on fire.
Exciting, huh? I can’t wait!!!!!!
F-F-F-FIRE!
So British Columbia is on fire. Lytton, BC was actually literally engulfed in flames and everyone had to (without a lot of warning) evacuate.
That’s terrifying.
I also found a bunny hiding out under a car in the parking lot when I came home from my walk. It was obviously a domestic bunny – it was black and super small and did not look at all like the gargantuan hares we have around here – and seemed very timid and unsure of what to do. Which probably means that someone dumped him. Because what else are you going to do to a poor animal during the worst heat wave western Canada has ever seen?
I hate people and I hate the heat and I hate that this is going to be our future.
This heat wave can already go die now, k?
Our condo was approximately 200 degrees this evening, so once the sun was mostly down we just went out and sat on the balcony and played Jeopardy! on the iPad.
Check out how creepy the cancer center looks.
ARCHWAY
Dudes, check out this super sharp Chinook arch we’ve got going right now.
I’m surprised I don’t have a headache from it.
Yay!
Eigenblogger 