jesse_the_k | It's not that cold, really

I'm feeling like an old fogey grump (see icon).

We live in Wisconsin! Yes, it's -1°F right now, headed to -26°F tomorrow, with a wind. Yes, we had around 6 inches of snow.

But honestly, it takes a full 20 minutes to get frostbite in this weather. Layer up! Wear a hat!

That the University of Wisconsin-Madison closed down based on an online student petition just stuns me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

greywash

Wow, I am clearly about 4000% unequipped to go back to the Midwest. I lived there for a couple years and it never got that cold and I still moved back to California because it was cold and white stuff came out of the sky... *shame*

From:

jesse_the_k

...because you recognized your limitations and left.

It's the folks that grew up here and are whining that marvel me.

From:

sonia

I thought the whole point of surviving extreme weather is the whining/bragging rights.

From:

jesse_the_k

Yes, but to match Scandihoovian cultural norms, one must delay the bragging/whining until one's sweating.

:,)

/holy shit! The Madison public library system is closing down! THAT is a crisis.

From:

breathedout

LOL yesterday I was talking to my childhood BFF who lives in Wisconsin, and she was like "on Wednesday the windchill is going to be negative 55" and I was like "... I literally complain about the cold when it's positive 55." CLEARLY I WOULD BE CULLED FROM THE HERD /o\

From:

jesse_the_k

No, the herd is fine, they're all inside heated barns :,)

From:

davidgillon

{does conversion to Celsius} Hmm, I guess that's a little on the nippy side.

We're just having our first snow of the winter, the lawn is just about covered as I type, but probably we won't get more than an inch (still enough to make the county grind to a halt, sigh). I went out for my first daily waddle of the year (having finally kicked my cold) just before dark and it was cold enough I turned back half way when my back started to complain at the cold, but that was likely still above freezing.

My neighbour comments he never sees me during the winter, I say 'No surprise,' I'm almost entirely inside where it's warm.

From:

jesse_the_k

Warmth is good, I will admit.

And now I'm at the age where i have compression gloves with open fingertips so I can type. And many layers on, and many scarves to keep my osteoporotic neck warm &c &c.

I'll admit, power wheelchair travel in this climate can be daunting. It's harder to stay warm when I'm not moving, and battery performance declines dramatically below 0°F/-18°C

From:

davidgillon

It's harder to stay warm when I'm not moving, and battery performance declines dramatically below 0°F/-18°C

The first one I was aware of, though my problem tends to be overheating my top half, as that's the one doing all the work, but I hadn't really thought about the second.

Peak snow here turned out to be 'just about covered the lawn' and half of it was gone by the time I woke up.

From:

magnetic_pole

We just had classes canceled due to about an inch of snow and temps in the 30s. We clearly should not complain about ANYTHING around here! *stays very quiet in respect for the upper Midwest and Canada* M.

From:

julian

Hum.

Is Wisconsin-Madison mostly commuters, or is it folks in dorms?

From:

ursula

Some of both. It's a flagship university, so there are lots of students in dorms, but not enough dorms to go around.

From:

julian

OK, I can lean on the side of that being reasonable, then, if there's a lot of people who have a long walk/travel to get to campus.

From:

ursula

Yeah, this is really not weather in which I'd want to wait for a bus, and the college town where I live is warmer than Madison.

From:

jesse_the_k

The good news is that UW students get subsidized city bus passes. The bad news is that our Metro can't provide more buses, because we don't have anywhere to store them.

Hearkening back to the brief time I was a UW student, I remember how frustrating it was moving between outside (which I dressed for) and inside (which was centrally heated to a Carter-approved 65°). There simply wasn't enough room in the lecture hall for the second skins we all shed on entry.

From:

bibliofile

Also, the campus is a couple of miles long, being smushed next to a lake.

I don't think it was just the student petition that closed UW-Madison. No mail delivery for two days, across ten states! When the postal service refuses to go outside, it's not that the students are too whiny. (Also, all city offices and libraries closed for two days. Not usually a thing.)

From:

ursula

My walk to work is forty-five minutes, so I'm very glad that the office is closed tomorrow!

From:

jesse_the_k

After actually getting dressed up for the weather and walking around the block, I'll admit that not that many people have enough clothing for the task.

From:

chanter1944

I was fully prepared to go out in the ick. My boss said otherwise, for the whole company, and I'm not objecting to the days off! Would I have gone out, had the companywide call not been made? Yep. Would I have bundled the frak up while waiting for the bus? Oooooh heck yeah.

This weather really, *really* makes me feel for both people and animals with nowhere to go. Fortunately, it sounds like Dane County's activating emergency shelter assistance across the board. Metro is; warming buses are in place at all four transfer points.

From:

jesse_the_k

Amen on having a warm place to be.

(MyGuy just bundled up to take Bella out again, and it took him five minutes to get all the layers on.)

I was surprised they closed MPL branches for just that reason.

From:

sasha_feather

Hahaha! You are a tough one! :D

From:

jesse_the_k

Tough and cranky and well-equipped with clothing.

From:

hurry_sundown

Child is at OSU, which cancelled classes in response to a student petition. Child pointed out that the expected conditions will cause frostbite within 10 minutes, and most students walk 15 minutes between classes.

From:

jesse_the_k

However, the frostbite-within-10 is for uncovered skin.

Turns out that I'm a member of the winter clothing police. Understandable, given my current inventory.

From:

seascribble

That's just this xkcd comic in real life, sigh. https://xkcd.com/1321/

It's snowing here in Halifax, but it'll turn to rain by lunch and then everything will freeze solid, but it won't get below minus 15 or so.

From:

jesse_the_k

...about this weather is the humidity. Generally, when it gets below 0°F it's really dry--like 20% humidity. Right now, sadly, it's almost three times that, which feeds into the wind chill factor.

As a former Bostonian, I always thought the marine snow was much colder.

From:

seascribble

Uggh, humidity is terrible.

I lived in Boston and yeah, the ocean makes it damper and colder. In Halifax, it's SO damp, I didn't even know a place could be this damp.

From:

laceblade

Okay, to be fair, the projected wind chills for Madison were -55 and -64 or something, which would be LUDICROUS!!

I feel like "with a wind" doesn't really capture NEGATIVE SIXTY-FOUR!!!

Did they really close just based on the online student petition? My sense was that these are windchills not seen since the mid-1990s.

From:

jesse_the_k

Only the chancellor could say whether the petition made the difference, and he's not talking.

Funny thing about the history issue.

I vividly remember January-February 1977, when I walked from 900 E Gorham Street to MATX Truax five days/week. It was wicked cold--ice castles appeared around every sewer inlet, the snow stayed white, the world squeaked.

So to support my grouchy position, I went searching, using DuckDuckGo. And you know, weather is something people have been reliably recording for at least 150 years. But weather data on the open internet seems to stop at around 2004.

Just to double-check, I used Google via the DDG bang and I DID find one useful link, a very snarky article from the DNR magazine in 1996. Your dad might love it

https://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/stories/1996/dec96/weather.htm

and then I found

"Maximum Consecutive Days of Zero or Subzero Conditions"
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/WI-Subzero.html

which agrees with you about the 1990s, and undercuts my 1977 rant. Damn it! but the double reporting on the MKE info doesn't give me confidence in the results.

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It's not that cold, really

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