Mavimet's Weblog

Five years ago when I wrote the stories about driving to Texas to get away from the cold temperatures here, it wasn’t even as cold as it is now. I thought the -23C with a windchill of -30C was cold though. This year at about the same time, we have been getting several extreme cold warnings, but the temperatures are in the -40’sC with a windchill value in the -50’sC. Now THAT is COLD.

This is not a record cold though and it seems I have survived some that were even colder. Between December and March, we have been known to have extreme cold and sometimes the cold is combined with a blizzard. It normally does not snow when we have extreme cold though and the sun is often shining. It is actually supposed to warm up enough for a bit of snow later this afternoon.

Currently the temperature here is a balmy -30C with a windchill of -42C and after the last few days, that is almost comfortable, although the extreme cold warning is still posted. This afternoon, they predict it will be -24C with a windchill value of -36C. Tomorrow they say it will be -14C with a windchill of just -17C.

As you probably know, I volunteer about 3 times per week at the Assiniboine Park Zoo, here in Winnipeg. For our own safety, they have cancelled all our shifts since Tuesday. We spend most of our time outside during the 3 hours we volunteer although they do encourage us to stay inside one of the buildings in our areas when it is very cold.

The main problem with this year’s extreme cold is that we have had more days in a row than normal. After one or two days closer to normal temperatures, it plunged back down to extreme cold again.

But February starts tomorrow and before we know it – April will be here!

I’ve been keeping my little bird feeder filled to help the birds get past this cold. Here is my little buddy St. Peanut getting a piece of a peanut the other day.

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