Well it looks like the first real day of winter here.

Woke up to -25°C, Currently -22°, blue skies, clouds of steam coming off whats left of the open water in the river and coating the trees in a beautiful layer of crystal ice that glints in the sun. So cold the roads are dry and the snow wont melt, so a nice drive in.

Todays high expected to be -10°C, but the sun is shining and its a beautiful day...well thats what I'm trying to convince myself anyway as there are 3 months of this still to come here Gotta keep a positive attitude to survive it!

Beautiful clear and sunny day in Kitchener as well. -3c but gorgeous day!

And we have snow - WOOHOO!

Pretty much the same here. Minus 21 first thing, now -18 and the promise of a high of -13. Otherwise, it's a beautiful day. Cloudless and no wind.

I fear I shall soon have to switch to Winter cigarettes, though.

Go on I'll bite. What on earth is a Winter cigarette? or is it just a lack of them, cause it's too cold and you don't want to go outside to smoke em....

Dozzzzy

What's with winter beginning on the solstice though anyway here? If I hear one more newscaster laugh "It's so cold, and winter hasn't even begun yet, ho ho ho"...

I always took the solstice to mean we're half way...

Edit: answered my own question - winter "begins" 7wks earlier in the UK --> scroll to "Reckoning" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season

Canadians tend not to smoke inside the house. In Winter, smoking in the garden/garage becomes an olympic event, balancing nicotine addiction with potential frostbite. The answer, one of them anyway, is to buy shorter cigarettes. Most brands come in a variety of lengths designed to reflect the weather.

Dam, thats so annoying. I thought that all Canadians were militant anti-smokers to such an extent that I stopped just over 12 months ago in preparation for living out there. And now you are telling me that they are such professional smokers that they have different types to match the time of year

Where on earth did that idea come from! They smoke like crazy here, but at least they have the decency not to do it indoors and impose it on everyone else.

It depends a bit on the location, smoking's mandatory in Quebec, but they're very prissy about it here, big signs all over demanding that people not smoke within 15 feet of doors and so on. At the hospitals they wheel people 16' away in beds and chairs and leave them in the snow. Bars and restaurants are nominally non-smoking though there are plenty of exceptions. This only applies to straight cigarettes, of course, you can smoke a joint almost anywhere. Still, people in Toronto are generally prissy about everything; Jack Layton, the archetypal nagging old shrew, is from here.

It shouldn't come as all that much of a surprise. The seasons are so distinct here that most things come in several formats. Why should ciggies be any different? Thus, for the major brands, you will have several options:

King Size; for general use.
Regular; the shorter "Winter" version
100s; essentially a Summer lying in the garden smoke
Menthol; for people with colds

As it turns out, yesterday was indeed the first real day of Winter. It marked the first occasion of beer flash-freeze.

Ye Gods! It was -24 at 7 this morning. That means that today's low will beat the previous December 14 record (set in 1972) by a good 10 degrees. No wonder I had to hurl the dog out the back door.

Same shit, different day

- 17 C here with blue sky and brilliant sunshine. Better than grey dull rainy skies anyday.

...a balmy +1c here I was shovelling in my pyjamas this morning.