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I built a small hardware device to show the departure time of the tram next to my house, because here in Finland it gets cold in winter.

Mostly the winter isn't super-cold, something like -10°C/14°F, but there are weeks where it will be -20°C/-4°F and then there's a big difference between waiting at the tram stop for 1 minute or 7 minutes.

2 comments

As someone who lives in England seeing -10C described as “not super cold” is interesting, I guess perception of these things varies a lot depending on where you live and how prepared you are

I moved from Scotland to Finland, so I guess I'm familiar with the UK temperatures ranges!

I'm generally one of those people who is always warm, so with that caveat inmind I don't find -10 to be too difficult. I can travel to the office, or shops and back with jeans, t-shirt a hat and a decent jacket.

It's only when things get colder than -15 or so that I need gloves, a scarf, and more layers. That's the kinda temperature where your face starts to hurt when you're outdoors, and daily life gets unpleasant. You start to think "Maybe I'll go to the shop tomorrow", and plan things so that you don't have to go outdoors like that.

> I'm generally one of those people who is always warm

You and me both! Here in Canada it can easily reach -30 and I go out with tank tops. I have a theory that if you can control your inner temperature, you won't feel cold, so it's an intrinsic thing. Although some of my colleagues exploited this when we used to go to the field to fly and test drones during harsh winter, they would bring up that theory to me to be outside while they were cozying up in the car!

I used to regularly ride my bike to work at -40C.

Once you’ve had a few weeks of that, you only need a little jacket at -20c.

Yukon, Canada.

It’s all relative.

The coldest I ever went walking in was -48c just below the arctic circle in November, not counting wind chill. I’ve also hung out in +48C a couple of times. Still hoping I can get a hundred degree temperature swing.

Here, if it's -10 degrees, then the tram probably won't be working anyway; Ireland tends to take that sort of extreme temperature as a license to shut down _absolutely everything_.

(It hasn't been -20 degrees here since records began.)

It’s funny how different countries handle this differently.

Growing up in the middle of Canada, I heard about schools closing due to weather, but ours only closed if it was below -40C.

I think it's largely a matter of how regular these events are. Finnish winters are universally cold, with lots of snow. So car-owners switch to winter-tyres in advance of snow/ice, trams always work, and suchlike.

In the UK, either in Scotland where I lived as an adult, or Yorkshire where I grew up snow was something that lasted for a few hours most of the time, and so people weren't used to it. If it snowed enough that the roads were covered busses would be cancelled, trains wouldn't run, and schools would be closed.

That is my conclusion too. When something is rare it isn't worth preparing for it when you can shut down. When something is common you have to prepare for it.

If it ever drops below 0C close to the equator (and near sea level) pipes should be drained and everyone do without water - this happens so rarely that it isn't worth the cost to figure out how to handle that. When you live in a place where it goes below 0C for weeks on end every winter that isn't acceptable and so you have to pay the extra costs of putting pipes inside buildings (or far underground) and insulating and heating those buildings to keep the pipes warm.