Hi Pat,
-40 will freeze the skin and cause frost bite in about 1 minute.....So you can imagine all the people standing at the bus stop, and what they look like! Hehe.... You can't see their faces at all. Everyone has wound scarves around their heads with just enough space for them to see out of.
If you throw a glass of water into the air, it instantly turns into ice pellets. It's kind of fun to do, if you can handle being outside to do it!
This is really cold, even for southern Alberta. We'll get one or two days of this kind of weather every month during the winter. But most of the time we hover around 10 to 20F. Our Chinook winds can take us up to 70 or warmer sometimes too! That's really neat to experience, especially in January when the rest of the country is up to their armpits in snow and really cold temperatures. This is the first year in about 10 years that we're going to have a white Christmas! Our snow usually doesn't come until early January. It's a very special part of the country to live in!
I'm devestated for our homeless population. There are many deaths related to the cold this past week. Some homeless people are actually being found dead in their shopping carts from being burned alive and not able to get out.... They try to warm themselves with candles and end up catching their blankets on fire..... It's hideous. I bought some fleece remnants from Walmart yesterday and cut 40 scarves from the fabric. I'm taking them to one of the shelters. We have 5000 homeless people in Calgary. The two shelters we have will accommodate about 1500 people. It's a crisis here.
I hope your pipes don't burst again! That must have been horrible. Your weather sounds divine!!!! 40 or 50 degrees!!!! Oh, I can only wish for that right now. We're about -30 today.
You keep warm too!
Ginny