Icy conditions
Icy conditions from unseasonably warm weather contributed to injuries sustained in a fall I took a couple of mornings ago outside my front door.
I live in the Yukon Territory of northern Canada. The weather here this time of year is not only normally considered to fall within the category of frigid, but was actually forecast to be colder than frigid by the weather prognosticators at AccuWeather. In fact, here’s what they brazenly predicted on public news broadcasts…
“Western Canada is where you should be prepared for the extreme cold,” said Boston. “We think temperatures are going to be below to much below normal this winter basically from the southern Yukon down through B.C., Alberta and into southern Saskatchewan.”
Usually a semi-frigid temperature in our climes can hover around the -25 to -30 Celsius region, and for a colder than frigid one we’d expect to see at least -45 to -60 Celsius temps to show up to make us throw that extra log in the fire.
Hmmm….(thoughtful pause) judging by the thermometer hanging outside in our unheated porch it seems they’re more than a tad off the mark this far into our current wintery season. But hey, we’ve still got a few months of it left for them to redeem themselves even though we’re not likely to believe them the next time either, with good cause.
As the saying goes up here, “if you want to know what the weather’s doing, look out the window”. And if that one doesn’t work for you, here’s another old reliable one too, “if you don’t like the weather now, wait five minutes – it’ll change”.
I imagine you can tell by now that we don’t really have a lot of trust in any of the weather folks or their predictions these days. That’s primarily because they decided in their infinite wisdom to move their offices fifteen hundred miles down south into British Columbia some years ago. Apparently they don’t have the same windows to look out of anymore way down there as we do way up here, because they’re sure not seeing the same things we are – satellite images and best guesses notwithstanding.
It really is easier – and a whole lot more accurate – for us to look out our own windows to see it for ourselves with the old reliable MarkII eyeball.
Well it seems I should have opened my own reliable MarkII’s a little wider that morning before I went smoking out the front door heading for the car, intent on an errand that needed accomplishing. Three steps later my boot hit a nice little slippery patch of ice poking through soft snow in our unusual and unseasonably warm -1 degree Celsius temperatures and away I went, airborne all the way.
A wrenched back and a few punctures and abrasions later I slithered to a stop and instinctively mentioned a few unmentionables in true hardy northern style, before dragging myself to my feet to hobble back into the house for repairs.
That slippery stuff has since been liberally sprinkled with the kitty litter you can see in this picture if you look hard enough. I didn’t put it out there for the benefit of the neighborhood cats, although who knows, they might show up anyways. It’s there to add that extra little extra crunch and purchasing power to boots that are supposed to stay on the ground, not go soles up into the air like mine did.
Littered with the Kitty stuff
But don’t worry – the icy conditions from unseasonably warm weather that contributed to my injuries hasn’t impaired my fingers too badly – I can still manage to sit semi-upright in a chair to write these posts and tell you all about it, which means life is still good here in the not-so-frozen North.
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