Flash Freeze

The last couple of days have been positively balmy in the greater scheme of Toronto weather - temperatures of +2 or +3 degrees, and all of the snow was melted away.

Not the ice though - the edge of the lake is a maze of ice chunks and the smaller ponds are all hard frozen and don't seem to be melting.

My phone sent me a warning yesterday afternoon about a coming "Flash Freeze", stating that a cold wind was on its way which would suddenly drop the temperatures right down and bring snow.  (The same weather system that caused the roof of the Minnesota Metrodome to collapse, apparently.)  Being used to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology warnings which are either too late or don't actually happen, I ignored this.

By the time Stephen took Jax out to pee at 11pm, it was -8 and everything had turned to ice, making the paths incredibly slippery.  And at 3am, the wind was at 50km/h, blowing snow against our windows and things around on neighbours' balconies.  They've had one of those moving platforms setup around the outside of the building to allow workers to clean the outside of the building, and we also discovered at 3am that the ropes for that are currently outside out bedroom window - the banging was so loud that we dragged our mattress into the second bedroom to see if that would improve things (it didn't).  So we didn't get much sleep.

So much for being a supposedly scaredy-dog, Jax slept fine.

I woke up this morning to this:

That's our bedroom window - condensation from our breathing has turned into a sheet of ice over it.

And this:

The top temperature is the actual temperature, and the bottom temperature is the "feels like" temperature including windchill.  -23?!  Argh!  There's snow on the ground too.

I guess the moose says it all.