¡Hace frío aquí! But more annoying than the cold is the extreme variability of temperatures (unfortunately very typique of Montréal). We’ve had a good winter so far, by my reckoning — lots of snow and neither too cold nor so warm that it all turned to slush (or as we call it in Montréal, la slotche). In fact, it’s been quite beautiful.
On Thursday it all started to go wrong. We had a lot of rain, and on Friday it hit 8 degrees (that’s Celsius; and that’s above zero!), so the “lion’s share” of the snow disappeared (do most lions even want a share of snow? Sorry, but I had to use that expression for the incongruous image it gave me of lions chowing down on a snow-zebra!). It was beautiful to be able to stroll around for a few days without a toque or gloves. Then — wham! — yesterday night the temperature dropped and today we had a high of -15. The sidewalks are sheer ice and the metre-and-a-half of snow I had on my terrace is down to less than a half metre. Sigh. Welcome to schizophrenic Montréal in January.