Winter Solstice (and: "The Cold")

Yesterday was Winter Solstice, December 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year. A number of you have been asking about the state of daylight in winter, here, as well as how things are with the cold. Well - read on.

According to the web (information helpfully supplied by my Grande Prairie librarian friend Ann - thank you Ann!), on Winter Solstice the sun rose officially at 10:07 and set officially at 15:05. There is light before and after that, of course, perhaps a scant hour or so. So no, Yellowknife is not far enough north to have days consisting only of dawn/dusk, and we do have daylight. It must be said, however, that the sun sets not far from where it rises and doesn't get very far above the horizon even in mid-day.

On a typical day in winter the view from my balcony looks like this (please ignore the flash reflection in the window - the sun is actually behind my building):

As to the cold - well yes, it's cold. But interestingly enough cold, like heat, is relative. Just as 20+ (we're talking Celcius here) is much more comfortable than 30+, so -20 is much more comfortable than -30, and -15 is considered balmy. My sister had told me this before I moved here, but you do have to experience it to really understand it. A few weeks ago, after a spell of -30 and colder, the temperature rose to -15, and I immediately took the opportunity to walk (15 minutes) to choir practice, rather than car pool, since it was so lovely. But even -30 is walkable - it's all in how you dress. So I'm learning which set of layers will do for which temperature: wool long johns, jeans (I've ordered a pair of flannel lined ones from LLBean), and windpants when it's really cold; skip the long johns when it's not, or when I'm going to be indoors a lot; forget the windpants but keep the long johns when there's not much wind. Ditto on scarves and toques: a scarf to cover the face when it's colder than -25, or when I'm doing a long walk at -20, but at -15, when I'm only doing errands, I don't bother with a toque and sometimes don't even put up my hood when going to the car.

Speaking of the car: there's where -20 and -30 make quite a difference. I keep it plugged in - through the good offices of my brother-in-law Bill I have a working block heater AND a battery blanket. Each (outdoor) parking stall comes equipped with plug-in capacity:

The Subaru starts well in the cold, despite its advanced age (12 years), but the shifting is very sluggish when it's so very cold. Still, I generally don't idle it for very long but start driving as soon as the gear stick will let me, being an adherent to the philosophy that cars warm up better when being driven (slowly) than when merely idling. "Suby", as the next picture shows, is holding its own in winter (thank you thank you thank you!). And I had to include a picture of another vehicle in my building's parking lot - Yellowknifers do have a sense of humor!

Another positive feature of the cold is that the ice roads materialize, and last night - to celebrate Winter Solstice - we made our first drive out on Yellowknife Bay on the ice road to Dettah, a neighbouring Yellowknives First Nation community (read about it at http://dettahandndilo.lgant.ca/). As the community describes itself: "Dettah is located on the east side of Yellowknife Bay on Great Slave Lake, about 27km by highway or 6km by water or ice away from Yellowknife." My sister teaches there, and can testify to the material difference between 27 km and 6 km as a daily commute; she was saying that the kids in school are always excited when "the ice road is in! the ice road is in!"

We went out on the ice road in part for the sheer adventure - driving on water!! - , in part to see if there were any Aurora Borealis to be seen (unfortunately not), and in part to see if the houseboaters had started their bonfire Winter Solstice party. Yellowknifers consider winter as such a time for partying IN the cold - and some of the houseboaters, a particularly hardy and inventive lot, were going to have a bonfire out on the bay where their dwellings are moored.

Yes, the house boats are moored IN the ice - winter is actually a good time for houseboaters since they now have readier access between their homes and Yellowknife. In summer they must canoe (or some such), and in the tricky spring melt/fall freezeup do some amazing treks hauling canoes over what ice is there, putting the canoe into water when the ice gives out. Apparently this fall the freeze up was more problematic than usual: we heard via a friend that because there was a lot of wind on a very cold day, water was blown onto the deck of one of the boats, froze, and of course weighted the structure in that direction, i.e. into the water. So the young woman had to spend several days chipping ice off the deck, and carefully monitoring the situation. As I said - Yellowknife houseboaters are indeed hardy and certainly resourceful!

Oh, and speaking of hardy: the kids. In the Northwest Territories kids get "indoor recess" when it's colder than -30, though in Nunavut, I've heard, "indoor recess" kicks in only when it's colder than -40. So I can often see them from my balcony, running about in the school yard with their bright snowsuits. Well - running is perhaps a slight misnomer, winter wear brings a new meaning to the word "trudging" here. Still, the kids seem to have a ball - if you go back to the second picture in this blog, you'll see a kind of horseshoe-shaped pile of snow in the near side of the Weledeh school playground. The other day the kindergartners were out in full force, running to the top, sliding and rolling down, just having a ball. It looked like such fun!