[Leica] Cold or not

[Martin Howard <mvhoward@mac.com>]

John Brownlow wrote:

> I cycled to work in Toronto through the whole of last winter, in
> temperatures down to -12 (after that I got a cab) but I was never 
> actually
> cold.

Temperature alone says relatively little about how warm or how cold a 
place will feel.  In Sweden, we'd routinely have -10C (14F) during the 
winter, and on occasion, considerably colder than that.  But the 
relative humidity was low, which means that as long as you had layers 
of clothing to trap warm air close to your body (and keep any wind from 
blowing it away), you were fine.  On a wind-still, sunny day you can 
walk outside wearing little more than T-shirt, middle-layer and a thick 
jumper and still be fine (of course, a hat would always be recommended).

Brighton and, I'm discovering, Santa Cruz have humid air.  Both are 
right on the coast and both places have a coastal climate with high 
relative humidity.  In the autumn and winter, this translates into the 
kind of cold that you cannot escape.  It doesn't matter if you're 
wearing all the silk undies and woolly jumpers you can find, the air 
itself just sucks any heat straight out of your body.  I have vivid 
memories of sitting in my room in Brighton, in bed, with a hot water 
bottle, wearing pretty much every single piece of clothing I owned at 
the time, drinking tea, and freezing so badly I was shivering.  I think 
the termperature was around +4C (40F).

M.

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