Cold as a witches tit

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Calgary has some weird and wacky weather. The four seasons are very distinct, you can definitely tell when winter is anyway. When we first arrived it was summer. Days were generally warm to hot with temperatures around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. The air is extremely dry and people use humidifiers to put water into the air, a strange concept for a New Zealander. This means that you get lots of electric shocks, I'm glad my shock-happy mate Callum didn't live here. Rain is rare and if it occurs it is usually accompanied by thunder and fork lightning. We watched some spectacular storms from our balcony. When Mum and Dad were in town a lightning bolt hit near the house with a huge bang; pretty scary stuff. During one storm I was playing with the settings on my camera and realised I had a certain one which would keep the lens open for 15, 30 or 60 seconds. This meant that any lightning strikes in that time period would be recorded. Nic and I snapped the lightning photos shown on one night when it was raining on the other side of the valley.

Autumn sees the weather turn cold and the snowing starts. Winter is ridiculously cold. It is insane that people live in weather like this. The coldest day I endured was -39. While I was in NZ for Callum and Ginny's wedding Nicola experienced -50. You have to wear loads and loads of layers and try and expose as little skin as possible. You walk outside and start coughing it's so cold, then your nose hair and eyelashes start freezing, then you get inside or probably drop dead. You hear of hobos freezing to death quite often; pretty horrible way to go really.

The good news for Calgary in winter is a weather pattern called a Chinook, which is a warm wind which blows off the Rockies to the west. It sometimes lasts for a week and temperatures may even reach 0. Warm huh? Mainly though it snows lots and there is snow on the sidewalk for months on end. It is slippery to walk on and you need to walk in tramping boots to work. With the Chinooks, the clouds form in strange ways so some of the photos are of this phenomenon. Some of the other photos are from Scott's uncle Al's balcony. He has a great view of the city and on a hot day there is no better place, especially when Al starts plying you with cold TNT beers. Scott's other uncle Marty’s place doesn't have the view but you sure get the beers and we always left with a pile of food, including on one occasion a humongous carrot cake which kept me fed for months.

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