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Comment by bb101 | Hacker News Reader

Out of pure interest, how would you describe winters in Edmonton?

It's a combination of:

- getting dark around 4/5pm - extremely dry and cold - winter starts in October, lasts until late April - massive urban sprawl so the city core is dead during the winter, and therefore the city feels lifeless.

That's particularly bleak and definitely biased, but it's not far from the truth.

I lived and worked downtown in the late 90s/early 00s, and going back recently, I have to say that it is a lot better than it used to be. There is an incredible amount of investment in the core, and the whole ice district area on 104th ave is pretty remarkable, including the new museum, hockey arena, and Stantec tower—which will be 68-stories high, quite surprisingly, the tallest tower in Canada outside of Toronto. The city has also invested in light rail expansion, and just installed a new bike grid in the downtown core. Things feel very different than they used to.

The short days are definitely tough. The shortest day of the year has less than 8 hours of sunshine. Sun comes up at 9am and sets by 4pm. However, Edmonton is usually quite sunny in the winter.

Conversely the summers are great. It's light from 5am to 10pm, so get almost 17 hours of sunlight. If you include twilight, it's more like 18 hours.

It's not that different from much of Europe. Edmonton is at the same latitude as Dublin.

I'm in Hull in the UK and we have basically identical latitude, Hull is just fractionally north.

Winter nights are long but I love them, I sleep far better in the cold and dark than hot and light, insomnia and the sun appearing at 4:30am sucks.

Yeah, I agree. I lived in London, UK for a while and found the lack of sunlight much worse. Edmonton has a lot of sun, which makes it pretty tolerable.

The past couple years winters have been worse in New York than in Edmonton. Maybe that's the new normal now. The hard part isn't the cold so much as the lack of daylight during the winter solstice period.

Take a look : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGpsfvRb120

Oh God, I looked at a homemade video of Edmonton snow... even the crunching sounds set my teeth on edge. I don't see how anyone could endure that all the way from October to May.

I grew up in Montreal and actually miss the winter there.

Meh. It's such a personal thing: I never found it particularly bothersome.

People talk up how hard winters are (and let's be honest - we all prefer temperate temperatures) but good clothing goes a long, long way in your maintaining winter comfort. A good windproof jacket, warm socks, waterproof boots, long johns, and warm hat and gloves go a long way. Get good at layering and things get a lot easier.

I find winters in New York harder to deal with: I have to dress warmly for the outside, and everyone seems to set the heat to "roasting" inside. Weird.

Wow, strong and very distinctly Canadian accents. I didn't hear anyone speak like this on my visit to the Toronto suburbs.

I went to school in Edmonton and it wasn't unusual to hit -40C. I remember one week where it never got about -35C during the day.

Did you go to school in Edmonton in 1890 or something? I grew up near Edmonton too and while January/Feb can certainly cross the -30 mark from time to time (and barely), -40 is unheard of. Maybe with windchill, like once or twice a year.

I just remember the day in 2009 [1] when Edmonton was literally the coldest place on Earth.

You're right that the winters have been getting better, but there's typically at least one week of below -40 weather, which is awful.

[1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eWnhUWh...

I've lived here for 17 years and there has never been a week of below -40.

Here you go! This is as close I could find. It was a while back.

https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/CYEG/1998/1/15/...

For the week of January 7th, the highest temperate was -28C. Lowest was -37C.

The prior week had a high of -25C.

Go back another year to 1997 and the temperature for the week of January 19th was a high of -30C and a low of -41C. I remember it fondly. The temperature never got above -30C for almost 10 days.

Winter desert. It's bad.

Like a mini Alaska.

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