Oh good god, Texans! It's under 40 degrees...big effin' deal.

[Sannum]

I am visiting family in Texas today and I am amazed at the fear and idiocy this coldfront is being treated by the local media. I am originally from FW, but I have lived in Chicago for years. I still live in Chicago and this is considered normal this time of year! The world does not shut down and there isn't panic. In December, I walked about 15 blocks in 15 degree weather from shopping at Water Tower Place to my apartment in Gold Coast. I thought it was 30 until I got home and saw the real temp. You wear a few more layers, you drive cautiously and you don't raid the damn supermarket for non-perishable foods. Icy weather in North Texas doesn't usually last more than a day or so anyway. Do you really need enough food and water to last until May? The news is calling this Arctic weather...um, no. Start complaining when you are on an EL platform with the train delayed for 10 minutes to remove snow from the Red and Purple Line while there are about 40MPH winds and REAL sub-zero temps. Really.
:rant:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. LOL---We've got gusts of up to 65 MPH right now,

and this weekend it's supposed to be sub-zero. It gets to be forty around here at this time of year, and people REJOICE...

Weatherman: "A warm spell coming up, folks; we'll get to forty today..."
Anchor: "Thank you, X, for that report....I'm thinking I'll go outside to celebrate this great, warm weather..."
Etc., etc., etc..

:rofl::rofl:

[Sannum]

3. 40 degrees=light jacket weather

:D

And these Texans claim to be so tough:P

[GOPisEvil]

5. Come back in August...

...we'll see who's tough. :P

[Sannum]

11. I've lived it Thank You very much

:P
It does get into the triple digits in Chicago as well. The humidity is murder and the sun reflecting off of the concrete and buildings makes it even hotter. It is a little cooler around the lakefront, but not by much. Cool summers there are a myth!

Last summer I didn't have an air conditioner that worked more than four minutes at a time. Fans do not work. My new place in the city has central air, thank god! In a 100 year old building too! I love renovations:P

So take that:P

I hope all is well with you my friend:hi:

[GOPisEvil]

13. Hey, my heater just kicked on - am I going to die?!

Everything is good, thanks. I start a new job Monday. :hi:

If my a/c ever went out, I'd have to check into a hotel. :D

[Sannum]

15. Yea!

I hope you like your new job. I am still on the hunt for another one. If I continue working where I am, I swear to god I am going to have a breakdown!

And about your heater---I did fiddle with the gas a bit so hopefully...um..nevermind:yoiks: :rofl:

[GOPisEvil]

18. Your job sounds awful. I hope you get a new one soon.

Gas scares me. I honestly don't know what goes in that little closet. It's like voodoo. Somehow the water is hot and the heater works. For all I know there are elves in there. :P

[BikeWriter]

20. You tell 'em, Pard!

[BikeWriter]

9. I survived a year in Alaska. That was quite enough cold, thank you. ;-)

[GOPisEvil]

2. Oh come on - we go through this every year.

Every time there's a freeze it's like Armageddon. It's old, tired and stupid. I can't stand news people treating us like we're idiots.

[Bunny]

6. They do that here too, and we actually GET snow.

They still treat us like idiots. A "snow event" is on the horizon, and they go into full 'live team coverage'. :puke:

[CatholicEdHead]

16. They also do it in the Twin Cities

One station (KMSP Fox 9) is horrible at this, they have this "Operation Winter" they jump all over and we are supposed to get this type of weather. Of course if it does not deal with day to day surburbia, it does not matter to them.

[BlueStorm]

17. Yes that's how it always is...

They must be bored out of their minds for them to get that excited about the weather. I mean c'mon, we get a few inches of snow here and it's the 'winter storm' of the month or something.

[Canadian Socialist]

4. I've forgotten how to change F to C

but... it was -30 with a windchill of -48 today... Celsius. But, and this part kills me about Calgary... tomorrow it will be +4. This city has the widest changes in temp of any place I've ever been.

[GOPisEvil]

7. It was 82F yesterday, today it's about 45F.

:grr:

[Ilsa]

8. Oh yeah, multiply by 9/5 and add 32 to get it up to F. I think.

I'm on drugs right now. Vicodin for surgical pain.

Honestly, I think the big deal is more about the abrupt change. I think it was like 85 in Dallas yesterday, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think Canadians are some of the toughest weather people out there. Of course, we also htink you might be mildly insane for putting up with it. But who am I to talk? It gets up to 115 F in the summer here in South Texas some years in August.

[Canadian Socialist]

19. Oh crap. You want me to do math?

However... if I do the math, when I lived in Winnipeg (rated the coldest major city in the world... we beat out Moscow! Go Winnipeg!), in the summer, it would be +40 C PLUS 100% humidity. And the mosquitoes! Christ on a crutch. I STILL have lumps on my body from their bites! Okay, did the math re: +40C = 104F. Close enough for government work. HOWEVER! When it is that hot in Winnipeg during the day, it does not cool down. Try sleeping in that kind of weather. And, no... we don't have air conditioners. Why would we?

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

10. I bow to anyone who can take a Chicago Arctic blast...

That Chicago wind during an Arctic blast made me whine like a baby...
And I'm from Pittsburgh.

[Sannum]

14. It's the beer and pizza

:P

I don't eat pizza, but I am sure it has something to do with the way we survive the winter. At least the beer does anyway. :beer:

[Maddy McCall]

12. Thing is, in Texas (and Louisiana, and Mississippi)...

they don't have the infrastructure that Chicago has to help them deal with ice storms. So, when power lines go down because they have a half-inch of ice on them, people may be without power for awhile. And god forbid you're anywhere near a crazy East Texas woman driving an SUV on ice for the first time!

We deal with hurricanes and tornados. I bet if a hurricane were about to hit Chicago, you'd see people there losing their minds the way that Texans and the rest of us get a little crazy about weather we're not used to.

[Pithlet]

21. Exactly. When I first moved here 7 years ago,

The cit had two whole snowplows. For the entire Memphis area, urban and suburban areas combined. I don't know how many they have now, but they still don't plow or salt residential roads. At all. They pretty stick to the major highways and overpasses

We certainly don't have the fleet that comparable cities to the north have. I'm a northern transplant, and it irritates me when other northern transplants complain about how people panic down here. Of course the north can handle this; they have the resources! It just isn't fiscally practical to have tons of salt trucks and snow plows when we maybe get one snow/ice event a year, if that. We've gone a few years in a row with no major winter events sometimes.

[Ilsa]

23. That reminds me of a funny story:

"And god forbid you're anywhere near a crazy East Texas woman driving an SUV on ice for the first time!"

Ages ago when I was living in Austin we had a mild ice storm, and a friend who arrived at work said she saw some poor fool of a woman in her car, sliding and sledding down the road, no control whatsoever. So the woman opens the car door and sticks her foot out like she thinks she could brake the car with her skinny foot and high heels. I guess there are boneheads even in Austin.

[Maddy McCall]

26. LOL

Great story! :rofl:

[Redstone]

22. 40 degrees is ARCTIC? What a bunch of weenies.

Redstone

[Xipe Totec]

24. Don't laugh

I have cousins in Mexico that bundle up when it gets down into the 50's.

[Redstone]

25. Yeah, I've see Floridians and Arizonans who do that. I really think your

blood gets thinned out if you live where it's hot all the time.

Redstone

[Benfea]

28. Their panic (e.g. food purchases) is worth mocking. Feeling cold isn't.

I spent my whole childhood moving every 3 to 5 years, often to radically different climates in distant parts of the world.

When I moved from the foothills of the German Alps to Florida, I mocked the Floridians for wearing (I kid you not) hooded parkas every time the temperature dipped below 55°F when I was perfectly fine running around in a t-shirt at 45°F. One year later, and I was shivering right along with them. It's called "acclimatization." Look it up.

[Benfea]

27. Blame conservative talk radio for the hysteria.

Remember their response to Katrina?

"Well, it's their own damn fault for not stocking up on bottled water before the storm hit!"

Of course, being good little conservozombies, they of course have to go into a frenzy of fear at the drop of a hat to prove how much better they are then "those government-dependent dark people."