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Comment by cal5k | Hacker News Reader

Cold-blooded Canadian here, so forgive me for asking - is this highly unusual?

I am from Madrid, and I can tell this is in fact highly unusual. From time to time it might snow in Madrid a couple of days, but nothing like this. In the mountains of course it happen almost every year, but not in the plains...

All the cities in central Spain are collapsed by the ice and snow (including the capital), there are no public transportation, emergencies services can barely make it into affected zones, a lot of people don't have water supply because of frozen pipes (including myself), trucks with food and supplies are still stuck and cannot enter in the city...

This chaos is of course because we are not prepared for this extreme cold weather, and we are not prepared because this is VERY unusual.

Let's say this is the same unusual as in the covid-19 pandemic,nobody would have imagined it a year ago.

Ah. Well, that makes sense. When it gets down to -25 here (thankfully not all that often in Southern Alberta) I just don't spend much time outside... although -25C still isn't cold enough to necessitate plugging in the truck. It gets truly, bitterly cold in places like Saskatoon, Edmonton or Winnipeg... -40 is not altogether uncommon.

My house of made of Insulated Concrete Forms and has an amazing r value. A hot fire in the wood stove can quickly heat the whole place up to 22C, even when it's -20 outside.

It can snow 50cm over a 12hr period, though, and that's always fun to deal with. I've gotten badly stuck in my own driveway twice this year (it's 40 feet long & annoying to clear), and both times the snowblower conked out and I had to take the thing apart and fix it before I was able to go into town to get groceries. Clearing the driveway with a shovel is simply not possible unless you plan to spend an entire day doing it.

Anyhoo, all this to say is - dealing with that kind of weather requires some preparation, and I can see how it would cause mayhem in a place where that's unusual. Hopefully when air travel becomes abundant again I can travel to Spain to enjoy its warmth :-P

In Madrid city it may snow one or two times a year, but not all years, also most of the time the snow goes away the same day it falls. A few years the snow remains in the city for a couple of days, but is not that common and is usually seen as a joyful event.

But this time, the whole city was completely covered in snow, all of it. Cars abandoned in the middle of the street, people skying in the main avenues, it was crazy, no one I know has ever seen this here so if it has ever happened, it must been at least 80 years ago.

The Spanish people definitely dont have Canada quality heating or insulation.

Compared to most of the world Canada is pretty much like living in the arctic. :) Even Americans dont want to live in the top half of the USA any more.

Lot's of Canada doesn't have "Canada quality" insulation, including my apartment but also a variety of houses I have lived in.

I grew up in the Okanagan, where temps range from -20°C to 40°C. Many houses there couldn't deal with either extreme well.

Even in Vancouver, -16 would freeze some pipes and kill some people. Not as bad as Madrid, but we are more accustomed to it here.

I don’t think heating quality or insulation is a problem for most people in central Spain.

Why do you think that? It's a pretty big problem in old buildings in the Paris city center, I'd be surprised if Madrid fared much better given its usually hotter climate.

Spain is kinda prelude to Africa, at least climate-wise. It gets cold and snowy in the mountains during winter, but something like that is highly unusual in Madrid.

Seems pretty unusual. Compared to the UK [1] which is much further North.

[1] https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/top-ten-coldest-rec...

Interestingly, even the UK doesn't get a lot of snow. That's because the gulf stream keeps it relatively warm for it's latitude.

One of the major concerns of climate change is that may disrupt the gulf stream which would be disastrous for the UK. Their ecosystem depends heavily on the fact that water from the gulf of mexico keeps them unusually warm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

Not only the UK, but the whole of Northern and Western Europe are kind of screwed without the Gulf Stream.

I remember back in 1984 or so, we once had snow in Madrid in May. Younger people laugh at me as if I'm just making that up, but what has just happened is way more unusual.

I remember that snowstorm, although very distantly! It must have been '84 or '85 ...

From the article:

> Spain's coldest night for at least 20 years

... and we wonder why so many Canadians move down south to California or Florida. Even cold-blooded reptiles like basking in the sun once in a while.

Yeah I am one of those cold blooded Canadians. Weird thing is if you look at what's going in Canadian real estate, the shitty weather is not reflected in price at all.

Weather and the high cost of living in all the major Canadian cities (compared to the average tech income) were the two main reasons wife and I decided to move down South. Don't regret it for a moment.

Isn't Canadian real estate mostly a parking spot for foreign capital these days, and has nothing to do with the actual demand of people living there?

> Weird thing is if you look at what's going in Canadian real estate, the shitty weather is not reflected in price at all.

Some Chinese investor needing a safe heaven for their assets (and/or, in case some purge happens like with Jack Ma, for their family) that can't be seized at random by the CCP does not care at all about the weather, only about the country showing a spine to China. That is why the real estate market of Canada is so thoroughly messed up - a third of Vancouver's market, for example, was Chinese (https://www.fortunebuilders.com/one-third-of-vancouvers-real...).

Also, in terms of weather, it's all relative.

Canada can get quite cold, but Vancouver is actually relatively moderate and is borderline Mediterranean due to its west coast location. Beijing gets both much colder and much hotter on a regular basis.

Also, air quality in Vancouver is significantly better than in Beijing, which would have more impact on living conditions than just climate by itself.

It's no colder in most of Canada (the most populated parts) than most of the midwest or the northeast. Average temperatures in the winter in Toronto are only slightly colder than NYC.

Yes, where I'm originally from in central Alberta, it gets cold as hell. But most of the population of Ontario (the most populous province) lives significantly south of the 49th parallel, on the same latitude as much of Oregon. Further south than Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire, and due to weather patterns this side of the lake is actually a tad warmer on average than the south side in central NY.

TDLR: Most of Canada isn't as cold as the stereotypes. Lots of Americans live in colder areas.

Madrid is generally considered one of the hottest places of Europe.

Spain almost never sees degrees below 0°C [1].

[1] https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/spain

Not true. In the north range mountains there are below zero temperatures every winter.

Spain has very different climates. I live only 30 kms away from the cost in the North of Spain and temperatures of -4 or -5 C are quite common in the winter. Some times we even have -10 C. So temperetures bellow zero are definitely common here.

In the north it’s completely normal to have sub zero temperatures in the winter. My hometown doesn’t have a particularly high altitude (650m, i.e. not in the mountains) and the average low for January is below zero.

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