I check my phone, and the temperature is 0º F, -18º C. That doesn't count the windchill, which makes it around ten degrees colder. Luckily it's not very windy today. Many times people who have never lived in such a cold place ask me what it feels like. If you are wearing a good coat, boots, gloves and a warm hat, it's not that different from 32º F, 0º C. That is until you breathe. When you breathe you feel your nostrils freezing, quite literally. It's not an easy feeling to describe. It hurts a little. And you feel like the air is thicker and cannot really reach your lungs. Then you run and hop on a bus, house, office, coffee shop... hopefully without breaking a leg on your way.
This is the coldest winter I have seen since I arrived in Chicago almost eleven years ago. I have worn snow boots every single day since I came back from Spain on January 12th. The snow doesn't bother me, I like it. What bothers me is that it is too cold to play with it, and that the city is not doing a very good job clearing it. That's an understatement, courtesy of a good humored day. Actually, they are doing a terrible job.
I won't be one to complain, as I will take this any day over the hot, steamy, humid, mosquitoed summer. Any day. I will report on that hot weather later. Maybe in August.
