Hi,

Looking for your honest opinion of how bad the winters are in Calgary. We are really caught between Calgary & Kelowna. Love the city feel of Calgary and have family there but also love the summers in Kelowna and life by the lakes.

Gav.

Like you said, its just brrrrrrrrrrrrr (NOT illiant)

Well Calgary would be a 9 on the BRRRRRRRRRR it's bloody cold scale and Kelowna would be a 5.

Does the scale stop at 9?????

LOL you wish...

Does that 9 indicate to be too warm or too cold?

I wasn't sure but i thought the scale might stop at 8 (coldest)

Not that bad. Yes, for a few days each year it gets very cold but not so cold that life stands still.

Most people in Calgary (as in England) work indoors so, even on a very cold day, life is not affected to any great extent.

If you catch it during a Chinook, not so BBBBRRRRR at all.

The warm cold warm cold cycle thing would drive me nuts though I suspect, but some people like it.

Plant hardiness scales are a good way to judge how cold it gets.

The coldest is Zone 1 - that's northern Canada.

The southern GTA is Zone 6 - same latitude as Rome.

Calgary is Zone 2 - same latitude as London, but no warmth blowing up from the gulf.

If you like to get outside in winter, the couple of weeks we get down to -35C in January would cramp your style a little.

Would be helpful if the local paper would publish a chinook schedule.

The downside of chinooks in winter is that they can decimate your garden plants if they break dormancy, really limits what species will survive.

Not even close.

I'd put Calgary at about a 5 or 6 on the brrr scale and Kelowna a 2 or 3.

According to the Calgary Horticultural Society Calgary is Zone 3A some areas of the city could be 2B and some Zone 4 or 5.

http://calhort.org/gardening/zonemap.aspx

1 million people survive through the winter in Calgary!

And winter is helpful if you like to ski, snowboard, etc.

BTW there's lots of beautiful gardens in Calgary - it's amazing what people grow here.

People survive in edmonton and iqualuit too

How many would move to Vancouver if they had a well paying oil industry job waiting for them there I wonder..... You can still ski and snowboard living in coastal BC, but it seldom gets below zero in your back yard. You can live in montreal or Ottawa and ski and snowboard fairly easily too come to think of it.

Lets not pretend that Calgary doesn't get pretty darn cold at times.