Cold

Every winter, you just know it's coming. Yes, it's winter and this is New Hampshire, so you know it's cold, and for the most part that's OK. Keeps the snakes and the bugs small. But in mid- or later January, you just know it's coming and there's no way to really prepare for it: it's that mid-winter arctic blast that shows up and hangs around for a week or two before going away, leaving us with the more normal winter temps of mid-20s or 30s, with the odd 15 degrees at night here and there. I really wasn't ready for it this year, so when it finally came, it really snuck up on me. (Is 'snuck' really a word? Am I supposed to say 'sneaked'?) Anyway, sure enough, earlier this week the temperature dove down to the minus degrees. Let me tell you about the joys of starting a car and scraping it at 5.30 in the morning -- in the dark -- when the temperature is -22 degrees Fahrenheit. For our Canadian readers, you'll be interested to know that 0 degrees Fahrenheit is -18 degrees Celsius, and that both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales actually converge at -30 degrees. To illustrate what that temperature is like, a fellow New Hampshirite sent this video into the local news of this person tossing a cup of boiled water into the frigid air so that you can watch it freeze literally as it hangs in the air, before it hits the ground.

Now, this isn't North Dakota or Siberia where they'd snear at a mere -22 degrees Fahrenheit, but still -- it's best to sip one's hot cocoa inside. Seriously, don't lick any metal poles until at least next week.