Baby, it’s cold outside.
I don’t care whether some people don’t like the song, that’s the only way to express the weather conditions around Prince George the last few days.
It also showcased, to some extent, how strange the weather has been. The middle of last week, we were shovelling a fair bit of snow off the walks and driveways (again).
Then the snow stopped (Yay!) and the cold weather moved in (Boo!). And that combination also led to some rather strange sights on the streets and sidewalks of Prince George. I saw someone walking basically down the middle of one street with their back to the traffic. There was a sidewalk on the other side of the street, and it looked like it had been plowed reasonably enough to make it passable, but our brave soul decided it made more sense to walk where she could get run over from behind.
Oh, and she was wearing a dark coat to make it harder for drivers to see her.
Of course, we also had a number of drivers who went by the clock instead of their eyes when it came to having their headlights on. There’s nothing I love more as a driver than squinting my way through a heavy snowstorm, especially at dawn or dusk, and suddenly having a vehicle loom out of the darkness, usually driving at a higher rate of speed than is safe under the conditions to start with.
The only good thing is it gets my heart rate up for a while.
I also love seeing the tough guys walking around when it’s -30 in their shorts and short shirt sleeves. I can picture them in a few years wondering why their joints hurt so much, and they’re saying things like “I thought arthritis was something only old people got.”
There are no guarantees that walking around half-dressed in these conditions will lead to medical problems, but it increases the chance.
And although it wasn’t local, I did see one thing on Facebook I got a good chuckle out of. A fellow was doing the old experiment to show how cold it was, where you take a pot of water outside, then throw it in the air and watch it turn to snow before it hits the ground.
Well, this guy had the pot of water, gave a quick explanation of what he was going to do, and then threw the watch into the air.
Well, not quite into the air. He had the pot tilted a bit when he threw the water, and most of it ended up on him.
He headed inside in a big hurry.