Should southern ontario be regarded as Canada's south?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Yeah, it's really about what you're used to... as I said, I would guess locals in San Diego won't think about swimming pools even at +25C and sunny if it's in January.

IIRC, in winter, people keep their pools open in my area of FL (Brevard County) but I don't really recall seeing people using them. The house we're keeping for my (our) own use has a pool, and obviously even in winter my dad will be using it if/when he's over there, but we're not locals. I believe that locals in general would not feel any attraction to a pool even in a +25C/sunny winter day.

As several people said, your own standards quickly adjust to your local weather. Costa Ricans find Costa Rica cold in winter. Someone from St. John's will find Winnipeg either unliveably hot or unliveably cold depending on the season. Southern Californians don't use swimming pools even on what would likely be considered decent weather for swimming pools because to them it's the cool-ish part of the year. etc.

Even staying in the same place but from season to season. +10C doesn't feel the same on Mar. 1 as it does on Sept. 1.

On a sunny 23C afternoon in mid-May in my neighbourhood there are 10 times as many people in their pools and eating outside as there will be on a sunny 23C afternoon in mid-September.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Even staying in the same place but from season to season. +10C doesn't feel the same on Mar. 1 as it does on Sept. 1.

This is part of what's funny about people from Ontario saying that California feels cold in July. 3 months earlier they'd have had completely different standards. And every year Ontarians live through weather that feels really cold because they go from hot summers to cold winters.

If you live in a temperate place where conditions are not too bad and don't vary much you can easily get used to them. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everything is relative (go stand outside naked in -40 and tell yourself it is as you lose limbs to frostbite), but San Diego falls into the range where it's easy to adapt to the weather at just about any time of year.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is part of what's funny about people from Ontario saying that California feels cold in July. 3 months earlier they'd have had completely different standards. And every year Ontarians live through weather that feels really cold because they go from hot summers to cold winters.

If you live in a temperate place where conditions are not too bad and don't vary much you can easily get used to them. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everything is relative (go stand outside naked in -40 and tell yourself it is as you lose limbs to frostbite), but San Diego falls into the range where it's easy to adapt to the weather at just about any time of year.

A place like San Diego offers outdoor temperatures relatively close to "room temperature" (apparently optimal for human comfort) fairly often all year round.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Even staying in the same place but from season to season. +10C doesn't feel the same on Mar. 1 as it does on Sept. 1.

On a sunny 23C afternoon in mid-May in my neighbourhood there are 10 times as many people in their pools and eating outside as there will be on a sunny 23C afternoon in mid-September.

Very true! (And it's perfectly normal.)

Re: what was discussed on the last page, I sometimes wonder how it'd feel to be "shielded against weather". Say, someone living in a solid modern condo building, car-less, in downtown Montreal, and having zero weather-exposed investments or assets.

Seems to me that it would be very easy to shrug off the "inconvenience" of winter (quotation marks fully intended) in that case.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by lio45

Very true! (And it's perfectly normal.)

Re: what was discussed on the last page, I sometimes wonder how it'd feel to be "shielded against weather". Say, someone living in a solid modern condo building, car-less, in downtown Montreal, and having zero weather-exposed investments or assets.

Seems to me that it would be very easy to shrug off the "inconvenience" of winter (quotation marks fully intended) in that case.

I once lived in a condo tower in Toronto that had an indoor connection to the subway and my job was a short walk away. If I wanted to, I could take the subway there and walk through the underground city to my office, thus not setting foot outside for my entire journey. There was also a full service grocery store/drugstore in the basement. I lived there during a particularly snowy winter.

If anything, living in this climate-controlled bubble reinforced the fact that a cruel and unforbidding winter was howling outside. I breathed more than my share of stale indoor air; I saw even less sun and spent more time under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights than usual. While I'm not comparing a winter in downtown Toronto to a winter in Iqaluit, I still experienced more climate-related deprivations than I would in any other season, and I don't think it was any more enjoyable than experiencing that same winter shoveling snow and being outside.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

If anything, living in this climate-controlled bubble reinforced the fact that a cruel and unforbidding winter was howling outside. I breathed more than my share of stale indoor air; I saw even less sun and spent more time under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights than usual.

I've often thought that it's mostly cars that aren't suited to winter. Being under time pressure and having to clear off your car, shovel a big driveway, and navigate treacherous streets is miserable. But if you're just walking to work Toronto winters aren't that bad.

The climate-controlled bubbles are bad in the summer too. This is one of the things I like most about Vancouver. I leave my windows open 24/7 for a good part of the year when the temperature is comfortable (and air quality is good year-round). In hot American cities and even Toronto people live in air conditioning for a chunk of the year. It reminds me of winter in cities like Toronto or Montreal.

At the other end I find some of the architecture here in Vancouver is a bit too optimistic. In particular there are a lot of 60's and 70's era buildings with Hawaii-like features: slippery tile outside, those useless window slat things. SFU for example even has unheated washrooms in some areas. It's more common to be cold and uncomfortable indoors or in quasi-indoor spaces in Vancouver than in most Canadian cities.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

At the other end I find some of the architecture here in Vancouver is a bit too optimistic. In particular there are a lot of 60's and 70's era buildings with Hawaii-like features: slippery tile outside, those useless window slat things. SFU for example even has unheated washrooms in some areas. It's more common to be cold and uncomfortable indoors or in quasi-indoor spaces in Vancouver than in most Canadian cities.

I find design in general is often imported as-is from warmer climes and ill-suited to Canada.

For example, those canopies at gas stations. Who ever thought that was a good idea in Canada?

I swear 95% of the times in the winter when I find myself totally freezing is simply when I am putting gas in the car. And this is a guy who skates and does x-country skiing every once in a while.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by someone123

Atlantic Canada doesn't have one climate. There are weather stations in Nova Scotia that get about 100 cm of snow a year and others around Atlantic Canada that get 300-400 cm of snow in a year and up. The same thing goes for temperatures. Greenwood NS has an average June high of 22, compared to 23-24 around most of Southern Ontario, while St. John's is 16.

I think the hype around Atlantic Canada's climate has to do with the fact that it's mostly treated as an undifferentiated blob by the national media (two places 1000 km apart may be considered the same location more or less), and historically people in the rest of Canada have enjoyed the schadenfreude that comes from reporting bad things about the region.

Absolutely agree and disagree.

The temperature high's between my home town (on the west coast of newfoundland) and st john's are almost identical year round.

However as I said before the functionally weather differences are extreme.

St john's get far more clouds/fog and we get much harder swings in temperature(which in the end average out the same).


That being said the reason I disagree is because overall the extreme colds and warms are similar enough.

Humidex's of 40+ are very rare same with windchills sub -40, in the context of our regions reputation this was all I was addressing.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Stryker

The temperature high's between my home town (on the west coast of newfoundland) and st john's are almost identical year round.

This is true but you are talking about two places along roughly the same latitude, with one being more continental than the other. There is a lot more variation in the Maritimes, and between the various parts of the Maritimes and Newfoundland.

Northern NB has mean annual temperatures around 3-4 degrees (e.g. 3.6 in Edmundston), while Western NS is 7-8 degrees (7.5 in Halifax) and as far as I can tell the warmest weather station in BC and all of Canada has an annual mean of 10.8 degrees (Agassiz). So there are weather stations in Atlantic Canada that are closer to the warmest in Canada than they are to other parts of Atlantic Canada. This suggests that assigning one rough climate to each political region of Canada doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And actually this isn't done in most of Canada; there is a strong distinction between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland or BC interior. But often Atlantic Canada is treated like one place (that in winter gets pounded by continual storms, when any given part of the region only gets hit by a small subset of them).

Humidex's of 40+ are very rare same with windchills sub -40, in the context of our regions reputation this was all I was addressing.

I'm guessing -40 windchills aren't that rare in parts of NB. NB doesn't really have an Atlantic maritime climate though, with the arguable exception of the Fundy coast. Coastal Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are more comparable, and fall along the same continuum as places like Cape Cod and Long Island in the US.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is true but you are talking about two places along roughly the same latitude, with one being more continental than the other. There is a lot more variation in the Maritimes, and between the various parts of the Maritimes and Newfoundland.

I really have to make this clear I don't think for the second that the climates are the same. As I have said 100 times on this site. St john's to me has the worst climate imaginable. And I pretty much believe the climate in central Nova Scotia is pretty much the ideal.

I have a brother and multiple close friends in halifax, family in Sydney, a very close friend in saint jean new Brunswick, I know all to well the weather differences.

The context was that our reputation is out of sync with reality.

When people talk about the atlantic Can climate they are referring to the larger population centres. Not the northern peninsula of newfoundland nor Edmunston. If you go by the halifax moncton saint jean traingle, the statement holds true.

My whole tangent is in response to a generalisation, I am offering a counter approximation that is closer to the truth. Not trying to disprove that generalisations can be made.

Originally Posted by someone123

Northern NB has mean annual temperatures around 3-4 degrees (e.g. 3.6 in Edmundston), while Western NS is 7-8 degrees (7.5 in Halifax) and as far as I can tell the warmest weather station in BC and all of Canada has an annual mean of 10.8 degrees (Agassiz). So there are weather stations in Atlantic Canada that are closer to the warmest in Canada than they are to other parts of Atlantic Canada. This suggests that assigning one rough climate to each political region of Canada doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And actually this isn't done in most of Canada; there is a strong distinction between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland or BC interior. But often Atlantic Canada is treated like one place (that in winter gets pounded by continual storms, when any given part of the region only gets hit by a small subset of them).



I'm guessing -40 windchills aren't that rare in parts of NB. NB doesn't really have an Atlantic maritime climate though, with the arguable exception of the Fundy coast. Coastal Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are more comparable, and fall along the same continuum as places like Cape Cod and Long Island in the US.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is true but you are talking about two places along roughly the same latitude, with one being more continental than the other. There is a lot more variation in the Maritimes, and between the various parts of the Maritimes and Newfoundland.

Northern NB has mean annual temperatures around 3-4 degrees (e.g. 3.6 in Edmundston), while Western NS is 7-8 degrees (7.5 in Halifax) and as far as I can tell the warmest weather station in BC and all of Canada has an annual mean of 10.8 degrees (Agassiz). So there are weather stations in Atlantic Canada that are closer to the warmest in Canada than they are to other parts of Atlantic Canada. This suggests that assigning one rough climate to each political region of Canada doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And actually this isn't done in most of Canada; there is a strong distinction between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland or BC interior. But often Atlantic Canada is treated like one place (that in winter gets pounded by continual storms, when any given part of the region only gets hit by a small subset of them).



I'm guessing -40 windchills aren't that rare in parts of NB. NB doesn't really have an Atlantic maritime climate though, with the arguable exception of the Fundy coast. Coastal Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are more comparable, and fall along the same continuum as places like Cape Cod and Long Island in the US.

Windsor-Riverside has an annual mean temperature of 10.7C, and I think the warmest BC station is around 11.1C.

[SaskScraper]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is true but you are talking about two places along roughly the same latitude, with one being more continental than the other. There is a lot more variation in the Maritimes, and between the various parts of the Maritimes and Newfoundland.
Northern NB has mean annual temperatures around 3-4 degrees (e.g. 3.6 in Edmundston), while Western NS is 7-8 degrees (7.5 in Halifax) and as far as I can tell the warmest weather station in BC and all of Canada has an annual mean of 10.8 degrees (Agassiz). So there are weather stations in Atlantic Canada that are closer to the warmest in Canada than they are to other parts of Atlantic Canada. This suggests that assigning one rough climate to each political region of Canada doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And actually this isn't done in most of Canada; there is a strong distinction between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland or BC interior. But often Atlantic Canada is treated like one place (that in winter gets pounded by continual storms, when any given part of the region only gets hit by a small subset of them)...
US.

"The Prairies" gets this all the time too, more often than not my weather is equated with Churchill, Manitoba even though my climate was over 13°C warmer for this month of November 2016.
Average temp of my home town was closer to Las Vegas average day temp for this November.
Maple Creek, SK (+11°C),
Las Vegas (+22°C),
Churchill, MB (-2°C)

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is part of what's funny about people from Ontario saying that California feels cold in July. 3 months earlier they'd have had completely different standards. And every year Ontarians live through weather that feels really cold because they go from hot summers to cold winters.

If you live in a temperate place where conditions are not too bad and don't vary much you can easily get used to them. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everything is relative (go stand outside naked in -40 and tell yourself it is as you lose limbs to frostbite), but San Diego falls into the range where it's easy to adapt to the weather at just about any time of year.

I've stood outside in a bathing suit here in Timmins when the temperature has been between -30 and -40 C. It's very painful and I was only outside for a minute. Luckily there was a hot tub to go back into inside!

Rolling around in the snow in a bathing suit is also painful no matter what the temperature.

[BretttheRiderFan]

I have no idea what this thread is trying to say. Corn fields? Okay. Are you saying south as in "the US south" in terms of the local culture? Because that's not southern Ontario at all. Are you saying south in terms of geography? Then duh, yeah, it's our southernmost area.

[BretttheRiderFan]

Originally Posted by someone123

Atlantic Canada doesn't have one climate. There are weather stations in Nova Scotia that get about 100 cm of snow a year and others around Atlantic Canada that get 300-400 cm of snow in a year and up. The same thing goes for temperatures. Greenwood NS has an average June high of 22, compared to 23-24 around most of Southern Ontario, while St. John's is 16.

I think the hype around Atlantic Canada's climate has to do with the fact that it's mostly treated as an undifferentiated blob by the national media (two places 1000 km apart may be considered the same location more or less), and historically people in the rest of Canada have enjoyed the schadenfreude that comes from reporting bad things about the region.

I can assure you that few Canadians outside your region know or care enough about it to enjoy schadenfreude from bad news.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SaskScraper

"The Prairies" gets this all the time too, more often than not my weather is equated with Churchill, Manitoba even though my climate was over 13°C warmer for this month of November 2016.
Average temp of my home town was closer to Las Vegas average day temp for this November.
Maple Creek, SK (+11°C),
Las Vegas (+22°C),
Churchill, MB (-2°C)

I can assure you that almost no one considers Churchill typical for the Prairies.

Regina-Winnipeg - sure.

Generally speaking, the only major city on the Prairies that is usually seen as colder than it actually is in the winter is Calgary.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Loco101

I've stood outside in a bathing suit here in Timmins when the temperature has been between -30 and -40 C. It's very painful and I was only outside for a minute. Luckily there was a hot tub to go back into inside!

Rolling around in the snow in a bathing suit is also painful no matter what the temperature.

You must be of Finnish decent living in So Po

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by BretttheRiderFan

I have no idea what this thread is trying to say. Corn fields? Okay. Are you saying south as in "the US south" in terms of the local culture? Because that's not southern Ontario at all. Are you saying south in terms of geography? Then duh, yeah, it's our southernmost area.

I'm simply trying to say that southern stretch of canada we know as southern ontario should be given the name southern canada.

Not because Canada needs a "south" or anything to do with america.

Southwestern ontario is already clearly understood to be different from most of canada as a unique region, it's simply we refrain from calling it the south.

The reasoning I believe is

1) Ignorance of human geography of canada.

2) The Toronto/Ontario centric view of Canada

3) ROC's Igornance of the differences found in Ontario

4) Paying to much attention to how the US divide's it's region.

[SaskScraper]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I can assure you that almost no one considers Churchill typical for the Prairies.

Regina-Winnipeg - sure.

Generally speaking, the only major city on the Prairies that is usually seen as colder than it actually is in the winter is Calgary.

My guess is that most Canadians would guess incorrectly that Regina and Winnipeg's average Winter temps are in the minus 20s, 30s or even minus 40s and not correctly in the minus teens celsius.
Even as a comparison, most Canadians would falsely guess Edmonton is colder in Winter than say ..Quebec City or something..

[SignalHillHiker]

I think the general consensus here is that winter on the mainland is clean - it gets cold, and stays cold, and you can enjoy winter activities without wading through slush up your ankles every day. At least, that's how my parents describe their winters in northern Manitoba - they emphasize that winter comes and stays far more than the cold. I think most people consider the mainland to be colder, and the prairies especially so. And I also get the impression most people know BC has very mild winters.

There's little quirks that always stand out, though. Most people here, for example, have absolutely no idea that cars can even be plugged in, much less that in colder climates they must be in order to start again.

And here, the most obvious tell is using an umbrella. They never took off here, probably because of our generally windy weather, and at this point they're just foreign to the culture. If I see someone with an umbrella, I can be basically certain they've come from away.

Also, Hunter rubber boots are an admired fashion choice. It's not just something that's tolerated in our often slushy conditions, they actually sell for hundreds of dollars and get lovingly posted to Instagram and the like.