The last few weeks have been extremely cold and I have not ventured out much other than to go to work and the store. When I say cold I mean it has been ridiculously cold in the range of -50C with the windchill. The wind is actually so strong that it can actually throw grown men around!! The wind picks up the fine snow that floats across the land and creates whiteout conditions as it blows the snow so much that doors are suddenly covered with snow drifts and people need to be dug out of their houses! The other day we had almost blizzard-like conditions where you couldn't even see down the road because of the amount of snow being blown around.
Another problem that one encounters with strong winds and cold temperatures is that EVERYTHING freezes insanely quickly. On a two minute walk from my house to the store I was walking into the wind and was facing the direction of the sun which was blinding me and so my eyes started to tear up and by the time I had reached the store about a minute later there was a piece of ICE that had formed on my upper eyelid!!!! This is worse than when you get ice on your eyelashes as it doesn't really irritate your eye, but ice on your eyelid directly rubs on your eye and feels EXTREMELY strange!! Thankfully the piece of ice wasn't very big and it quickly melted once I got inside.
Ice frozen on my upper eyelid
Even the outside of the house is suffering from the cold temperatures and my chimney is freezing over and I have lovely icicles building all around the chimney and roof of the house. Thankfully the ice hasn't covered over the entire chimney so I am still fine and have heat.
Icicles covering our house and chimney
This week a number of people whose houses are on the outskirts of the community have been dealing with frozen water pipes as the wind and cold get in under the houses (all houses are built on 'stilts' as they can't sit directly on the ground as they would melt the permafrost and the ground would become unstable) and the pipes can't withstand the cold and freeze. No running water or use of toilets in the dead of winter is not fun!! I am very happy that our house has both a skirt (cover over the bottom of the house to prevent most of the wind from getting in under the house) and is also in the middle of the community so we don't get the brunt of the wind hitting our home directly.
House on stilts with no skirt covering the bottom of the house
