Long underwear? Check (though I had to go buy it today).
Toque? Check.
Snobby attitude about the West Coast? Check.
Having just returned from a brief jaunt to Victoria, I’m off to Banff tomorrow morning to Blogs ‘n’ Dogs. Travis reports that it’s -22° C in Banff right now. Speaking as a boy who’s spent his life on the temperate West Coast, those kind of numbers scare me. I just checked, and at about 1:00am local time, it’s a balmy -28° C. What madness.
The only other time I can remember being in really cold weather was in the Czech Republic. I don’t know how cold it was, but it was might chilly.
But, you know, I’ve heard that it’s a dry cold in Alberta. Which apparently makes all the difference. Yeah, right. That sounds like another thing that’s better in theory.
UPDATE: Forgot the bloody requisite tag: blogndogs blogsndogs.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
heh
make that blogsndogs NOT blogndogs
and yes it is confusing
see u in Banff
1) Lived in Victoria, BC for 10 years
2) Lived in Golden, BC (90 minutes West of Banff) for 17 years
-28C? Psssshaw!
Was that with or without the windchill?
My brother is coming to visit us from Medicine Hat next weekend. Banff is pretty and cool; Medicine Hat is real prairie cold.
smp
People in cold climates talk about ‘dry’ cold to make themselves feel better; it’s bullshit. When it hits -20 here, it doesn’t matter if it’s dry or wet: we all just say “it’s effing cold out”.
That’s without the windchill. Windchill is a very fluid concept, and scientists still don’t all agree on its actual effects. But basically, -28 with no wind == very survivable weather, if you’re all covered up. -28 with 20kmph winds? Suddenly you’ve got a problem.
Nope, dry cold definitely makes a difference. Lived and worked in the Yukon and NWT for three years, and when going from -40 in Whitehorse to -5 here in Vancouver, you could feel the wet clammy cold seep into your bones at the airport.
I’ll take a dry -40 to a wet -5 any day, even with windchill.
Having just moved from Edmonton to Vancouver can definately say that there is a diff between wet and dry cold. You’d think coming from a -30 degree winter I’d be jumping for joy out here, but I find a wet -2 degrees chills me to the bone. It gets inside.
hey, i think that dry cold and wet cold are different because a dry cold theres like nothing there you just like cough and stuff…but a wet cold is like when u have a runny nose and you cough up grose stuff even in the winter!!!