Calgary and Saskatoon are variations of the same continental climate: dry, cold, sub-zero, very long winters. Practically no spring or autumn. Short, warm summers interspersed with intense thunderstorms. Summer is the wettest season. Both places are very dry and have short, limited growing seasons. It may not snow a lot, but when it snows, it stays on the ground for the entirety of winter.

Calgary does at least grt chinooks though.

But it's still naffing horrible.

Your not wrong there, even worse in dead rear too brr, by the time we get outside sorted its gonna be snowing again

Thanks very informative! I'm sure Calgary is lovely even in winter haha! People we spoke to have said they would rather have deep sub zero than fluctionating around 0! They hate the slush! Ha

Dry climate, dry snow, very little slush. Get it in April but the rest of the time its too fluffy.

It's even colder in Saskatoon.

One thing that I've noticed is that people use their European (or wherever) yardstick for weather. What you know as "winter" is what people here call reasonably warm weather.

When it starts snowing, that is because it is warm enough to snow, i.e. there is moisture in the air. In most parts of Europe, that is as cold as it ever gets, but here it gets way colder than that and all the moisture sticks to the ground as ice and it gets incredibly dry. Far drier than anywhere in Europe ever gets I suspect, unless you're in northern Finland or something. We're hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean and the Rockies are in the way too, even places like Oslo and Stockholm are near water. Calgary is more than 600 miles from the Pacific - that is the distance from Land's End to John O'Groats.

So here you have blazingly sunny days in winter but it's -25 for example.

Bear in mind how cold that is: at -23 skin freezes on contact with air and that's why walk-in freezers and deep freezers run at just above that temperature. And it gets much colder than that here.

Frankly the English language lacks the words. There is a noticeable difference between -15 and -25 and -35 but to a weather forecaster it's all "frigid".

In other words, the Canadian Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) is Canada's Siberia. I think.

Can be effing cold thats for sure, especially when you think its warm at -21

If that is true, could you please explain to me how I have been able to ski at temperatures of -30 with exposed skin on my face and yet my face hasn't fallen off

Well they established this by getting some Canadian Forces personnel and sticking them in a wind tunnel. I assume by "on contact" they mean within a short period of time. But it is a fact they don't run freezers below -23 because of the freezer burn risk. Or does it mean on contact with something exposed to an air temperature of -23?

I know I picked up a metal cabinet that had been standing outside in about -25 and my hand froze to it as I was moving it, don't do that, it was very painful...

We need words for colder temperatures. To me, -5 is "cool", -10 is "survivable", -15 is "cold", -23 is "time to stay inside", -30 is "f--k no", -35 is frigid, -40 is super frigid and -45 is "my lungs hurt". And anything colder than that involves a lack of conscious linguistic thought and a mental image of a steaming hot bath.