This is what our thermometer read at around 7:30 this morning. It doesn’t even matter if you want to read in Celsius or Fahrenheit, since -40 is where the two scales meet. Whatever system you use, this means it’s friggin’ cold!
When we encountered weather like this in Fort Liard, it never really bothered me. We could still go for (somewhat abbreviated) walks with Nanuq by bundling up properly, and it was fun watching the smoke from the houses tumbling down onto the road instead of rising up in the air. But in Fort Liard we never had to try starting our car at -40 (well, I did once, and as a result broke the lever that was supposed to open the hood…) and there was no small child to bundle up, either.
In this kind of weather, one has to decide if it’s more dangerous to have a child bundled up in bulky clothes and therefore not truly secure in her carseat, or to have her secure in her carseat but in serious danger of freezing if something happens along the way to the destination. On “normal” cold days, we just put her in a couple of fleecies and heap blankets on her lap. But on a day like today, I bundle her up and hope that everyone drives extra carefully…
