Cold Where You Are?

Question

Good Afternoon! I was just wondering how cold it was where you are? At the Ez-Robot Office, it appears to be really cold! (Snow On The Ground?)

Jeremie · Answer

-15degreesC isn't too bad for us, except that the roads are really bad due to the blowing snow. Blowing snow moving across the makes for very icy conditions. I counted 6 accidents on the way to work this morning and several more cars in the ditch from earlier this morning.

DJ Sures · Answer

Don't listen to optimistic Jeremie - it's absolutely painful outside it hurts my face. It's too cold for the display on my car to display anything legible  And he's right, this is one of the warmer days....

fxrtst · Answer

OMG, thats insane! After living in sunny California for 25 years, I've started to complain about an unseasonable "cold" winter in Portland Oregon all the way down to 17 last night (our average for the winter is 50F).

CardboardHacker · Answer

-9 in Ontario today! Coldest day yet!

thetechguru · Answer

Keep in mind, this is -15C, so about 5F. Bad, but not THAT bad. When I was younger I would go cross country skiing when it was colder.... (As a US citizen, I apologize to the Canadians and the rest of the world for our backwards refusal to adopt the metric system. Although, I actually like the Fahrenheit scale better for temperature because it is more granular without talking about fractions of a degree.) Alan

westies · Answer

Cor- it's a positive heat wave over here (U.K) ,how you can survive in those temps. We have a sweltering +4 degrees C at the moment ! Geoff.

Dunning-Kruger · Answer

@westies I have a question.... Why did England send the iffy population of England at the time to warm beautiful Australia and the so called upstanding Empire Loyalists to frigid Canada? Dude, can you ask the Queen for me? I really want to know... eyeroll

nick777 · Answer

@Richard R Great question, I'll definitely be giving it a great deal of thought today while drinking my beer @Balmoral Beach Sydney, cheers

robot56 · Answer

63 degrees F here in southern California...... tired

DJ Sures · Answer

@nick777 don't worry - we do take pride in our beer! And there's no trouble keeping it cold here

WayneA. · Answer

Wow! I cannot imagine what -15C would feel like. The coldest I have felt was 6 degrees F. That happened about 3 nights ago for me. How long does it take to warm your cars? Do you have issues with water freezing in your homes? Do any of you live in rural areas? What does it mean when the snow blows on the road and it ice's? I do not think I have ever heard of that. I had a question, what would be involved in putting an EZ-Robot product, with the camera facing outside. (So we could see the outside world from where your office is located?)

thetechguru · Answer

-15 C is +5 F. If you have felt +6 F, imagine one degree colder I used to have a Chevy Citation (don't laugh, it was free), but it started as a Canadian car, then lived in Vermont for a while before my sister gave it to me. It has a plug-in block heater so that it could start on cold Canadian winter mornings. Alan

Jeremie · Answer

Quote:What does it mean when the snow blows on the road and it ice's? I do not think I have ever heard of that.  In the prairies this happens quite a bit. There's a lot of wind in the prairies and it blows the snow across the fields and over the roads. As the snow blows over the roads a small layer of ice starts to build up and fill in the small cavities on the surface, it's commonly known as black ice. It gets that name due because it matches the color of the asphalt and is very hard to see. It doesn't really matter what kind of tires you have on your vehicle the best way to slow down on black ice is to decelerate. Using your brakes on black ice can get you a one way trip into the ditch, which happens quite a bit up here lol. Quote:It has a plug-in block heater so that it could start on cold Canadian winter mornings. I'm sure someone is going to ask what a block heater is. It's a heating pad that attaches to the engine block and heats up the oil to make it less viscous and much easier to start up the vehicle. I always plug-in my vehicle on the cold winter nights.

DJ Sures · Answer

The low today will be -27

nick777 · Answer

Sydney today 41C , quickly running out of cold beer  looks like DJ's got the barbi going

Jeremie · Answer

Lol, on those -5C days I'm definitely tempted to pull out the Barbi Man, I don't think I've ever experienced that kind of heat, 41C is insane.

Jeremie · Answer

Figured I'd give you a picture of the blowing snow I was talking about Pretty much sums up my drive to work each winter morning.

fxrtst · Answer

Omg!

Dave Schulpius · Answer

We're enjoying winter here in Wisconsin. Just part of life and having the privilege of living in such a beautiful State!

WayneA. · Answer

@Jeremie That looks kinda cool actually! So you just drive on the road and hope for the best that you don't hit a slick spot? I guess it is hard for me to understand the fact that since it is already cold and there is snow on the ground, how can black ice form? Which would indicate that the snow needs to melt and then refreeze.

Jeremie · Answer

Yeah when driving on black ice you just drive as straight as you can, foot off the gas to decelerate instead of using the brakes. My bad, yes the snow melts and refreezes when we get chinook winds (warm winds in the winter). The temperature fluctuates quite a bit in Calgary.

DJ Sures · Answer

The snow also melts because the sun is bright and actually quite warm - it's the air that is cold (-20). The sun heats up the road, also so does the traffic help with that. The ice is also formed by compacting the snow under the pressure of the tires. Right now if you looked on the street in front of ezrobot office, there's snow packed to ice that's hard as cement. The city puts gravel to prevent sliding. The gravel mixes with the snow and ice under the pressure of cars, trucks and semis to make a mixture that's as strong as concrete. It's pretty surreal actually. The world changes significantly here between the summer and winter. Your car in the winter barely starts and when it does, feels much different. You can hear the chassis creek from the cold. Everything is so brittle this time of year, because it's exposed to -20 to -30 degree temperatures 24 hours a day. Even being inside the home or building is different. Because the temperatures aren't consistent between different rooms and areas of the home. It's difficult in the winter to maintain an equal temperature that satisfies everyone. Jeremie has a family and probably deals with that issue more than myself. Another big one is the heater in cars. For me, by the time I get to work, the car is literally just starting to blow warm air. It takes a 10 minute drive for the engine coolant to reach a warm temperature. Some days when it's real cold (like today) I will let my car run for 10 minutes before leaving my house. The funny thing is that the engine at idle doesn't produce enough heat to warm the coolant! So my car can idle all day and the coolant won't even warm up enough to heat the car. Even though the coolant runs through two turbo chargers and the engine block, still doesn't produce enough heat at idle. The only way to get heat is to drive the car so the Rpms are high enough to flow the coolant quicker and produce enough engine block heat. It's pretty remarkable to imagine that humans lived in this environment over a hundred years ago without these comforts to battle the elements.

thetechguru · Answer

I imagine in tht cold I would lose the other advantages, but one of thr things I love about my Toyota Prius is it doesn't use engine coolant for the heater. It runs the AC "in reverse" as a heat pump. Warms up the car very quickly and can do it when I am running 100% on battery power and the Internal Combustion Engine isn't running. However, I don't get great mileage in the winter (45mpg, which is still better than any other car, but I get 55 in the summer, even running the AC which uses a few amps. Just when the ICE is running it is way more efficient in the heat), and Maryland winters have very few days below freezing. It would be way worse in Calgary. Alan

Dunning-Kruger · Answer

@DJ Quote:It's pretty remarkable to imagine that humans lived in this environment over a hundred years ago without these comforts to battle the elements. 100 years ago humans were much tougher than we are today.....

WayneA. · Answer

@DJ and @Jeremie Would it be possible to place a camera looking outside the office?

DJ Sures · Answer

Oh, those cameras are 20 feet high way up in the ceiling. Not as easy to simply move

Jeremie · Answer

@WayneA. if you're curious about what kind of conditions we are seeing on the daily you're more than welcome to check out the Alberta Motor Association Traffic Cameras for Highway 2 (closest Highway to us). They aren't live but they do take a snapshot every few minutes.

WayneA.

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