Being true to my English roots, I need to do a quintessentially English thing and dedicate a post to the topic of the weather at least once.
We have left the mild and mostly wet Britain, instead finding ourselves living in some places with temperature extremes.
In Sevilla, we experienced 40+ degree heat for days on end. We were considered to be lucky – we were – but it is one thing going on holiday and experiencing that temperature; sitting by the pool sipping iced drinks, or wandering around shady city centres stopping every couple of hours for coffees in air-conditioned cafes and eating meals in an air-conditioned restaurant, before heading back to an air-conditioned hotel. However, it is quite another thing to actually live in it.
Everyone stays indoors in the middle of the day to avoid the heat, but when that is the time of the day in which you have the most energy you cannot go out to post a letter, buy some apples or just go for a walk, it makes life difficult to say the least! It made my day unproductive, a waste of time, which is something I hate – I have had my fair share of wasted days in my lifetime. I thought the sun would be good for the ME – the sunlight part was, but the heat it seems, was far too a severe extreme for the ME to cope with. I never realized until that summer how much heat items emit: laptops morphed into mini heaters, kettles gave off a sauna-style heat, and I couldn’t use a vacuum after 9.30am. As for cooking, well I can see why barbecues are a valuable staple, and why not every house has an oven.
Last winter in Munich there were a few days where it plummeted to -15 degrees, and the temperature didn’t rise above freezing for two weeks. I considered that to be pretty darn cold. Not anymore! The city also witnessed hot days in the summertime – not Sevilla heat, granted - but it did get pretty sweltering at times; well over 30 degrees. It was humid which made the heat feel hotter, and in the height of summer thunderstorms rolled in most evenings. Munich also experienced The föhn – a warm dry wind which blows north over the Alps, making the snow melt very quickly as well as producing a warmer climate in a matter of hours. It brings cloudless skies, and also fantastic clear views of the Alps from the city. It is also said to bring on headaches in people due to the low pressure, as well as increasing the number of suicides…
The Montreal weather certainly provides a great deal to talk about on the subject:
We had been in Montreal for just three weeks when we had an earthquake of magnitude 4.5. (It woke T up and so he prodded me to see if I was OK and not freaked out by it. I was not worried by it as I was fast asleep however, so was more than a little cross at being woken up by him.) A week or so later we then felt the fallout of Hurricane Sandy, thankfully we got away lightly with winds around 74km/h (45mph) and a few homes lost their power.
Extremes such as these to one side, the weather seems to jump around so quickly; I don’t recall living in a place where the temperatures jumped around so markedly and so quickly as they seem to do here. One day it could be 6 degrees, and the next it will be minus 16. Just when you think it is time to replace pumps and t-shirts with fleecy boots and gloves, it changes. But this leap in temperature doesn’t seem to be accompanied by thunderstorms as I would have expected it to. It will be interesting to witness one, as storms were different in Germany and Spain than those in England. I have no idea why, but the ones in the UK didn’t seem to resonate in the ground or be as colourful as they did in Europe.
It's not just temperatures either. There was one particular day in the beginning of October, when I was listening to the radio and the presenter said that when he looked out of one window it was blue sky and sunshine, but when he looked out of the window on the other side of the building, it was dark grey sky and snowflakes!
Three and a half months into our Canadian adventure, and the weather has provided me with quite a bit to write about; something tells me this won't be the last time I scrawl down my witterings on the elements across the Atlantic...