Venkat

I’m from Sydney, so I’m one of those out-of-whack Australians. I think Australian weather is more out of whack than you realize. The enforced stillness and sense of inconsequence almost perfectly describes some of the days and weeks we have in January and February. But heat is the culprit, rather than cold.

I have to admit, I don’t know what real cold is like. Winter in Sydney is an idyll of crisp, cool mornings and clear blue skies. It’s the best time of year, in my opinion. There’s certainly nothing deathly about it — the grass is green, and Australian trees don’t drop their leaves all at once.

But in summer we have the heat, and that is certainly deathly. I don’t think northern-northern hemisphere types understand what real heat is like (the same way I don’t really know about cold). The kind of heat we get in southern Australia goes well beyond tropical. It gets so hot here that the ambient temperature can get within a couple of degrees of the flash-point of eucalyptus oil. This means that — on a day of “catastrophic fire danger” — you can light a match in an Australian forest and be engulfed in a huge fireball. But even without doing something silly like that, extreme can kill you just as surely as extreme cold can.

In southern Australia, at least, December through February are still the months of death and renewal. But heat and fire are the purgatives that see out the old year rather than cold. So it still makes sense to begin the new year in January. (In fact, I think Christmas and new year are a much bigger deal here, since they coincide with the start of the summer holidays.)

While there is danger to extreme weather (like bad things will happen if you are ill prepared and do not dress accordingly) I think it is still mostly relative and perceptual.

I have a theory that our bodies react differently to the cold depending on various factors. When I lived in Scotland, 0 degC felt colder than 32 degF here, and I think that is as much to do with humidity as anything else. Wet cold goes through your clothes and chills you to the bone, whereas dry cold doesn’t penetrate. It is a lot easier to dress against dry cold. I also think that there is a band of comfortable cold between 5 degF and 25 degF. Below that it is just cold.

More interesting to me is the answer to the whole “how much snow did you get this last storm?” question. I have a theory it is a complicated function of actual amount of snowfall, the speed and direction of the wind, and the testosterone levels of those in the conversation.

Extreme heat does have its own deathliness. Extreme stillness and ennui overcome you on the hottest summer days in India, and the only thing you can do is take a nap in your own clammy sweat. But it is bearable (for me) in a way that extreme cold is not. So long as you are out of the direct Sun of course.

Re: relative vs. absolute, maybe it is absolute at the extremes, relative between them. I agree that if you live on the equator and the coldest you ever experience is 28 degrees C, you are hardly going to calibrate that as your ‘deathly cold.’

But between, say 4-5 deg C and -40/-50, you get the relativism.

If a tropical person is standing outside next to an arctic person, both dressed appropriately, neither one will die. But the tropical person might think so.

Conversely, if I go to India in the summertime and feel like I simply can’t stand the oppressive heat that all of my hosts are comfortable in, well, that’s a sign that I’ve got some toughening up to do. The fact that humans survive in a particular climate is proof that it isn’t deadly.

The time period from Jan 2 to April 1 is a disquieting period of tossed and churned slumber punctuated by dreams of warmer climates only a family minivan trip to the south.

It is relative. But I guess if you are a long-stay visitor, the local “cold culture” gets to you.

Just the other day my neighbors and I were having a beer outside in -10 C / +10 F.