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One that always surprises me, Edmonton (Canada's most northern city) is about the same latitude as Manchester in the UK.
by VBprogrammer 6y ago
One that always surprises me, Edmonton (Canada's most northern city) is about the same latitude as Manchester in the UK.
- barking 6y agoOr that the most northerly French-speaking town in the world is Dunkirk in France and not somewhere in Quebec.
- arethuza 6y agoI did wonder about Belgium but it looks like most of Belgium (and all of the French speaking parts) are further south than Dunkirk.
- jwilliamson 6y agoThis is not true. The town of Radisson was built in the 70s during work on the James Bay Project and is still mainly francophone. It's about 2° north of Dunkirk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radisson,_Quebec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radisson,_Quebec
- barking 6y agoInteresting but I'm not sure I'm buying it ;-) Radisson is a small unconstituted locality so whether it qualifies as a town is questionable. It also has a population small enough to fit in two or three buses.
- nkurz 6y agoHow about Fermont in Quebec, then? http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/fiche.aspx?no_seq=22297 http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/fiche.aspx?no_se... It is predominantly French speaking, is 1° further north than Dunkirk, is incorporated as Ville de Fermont, has a population of about 2400. It also has a Wikipedia page that claims "Fermont is arguably the world's northernmost Francophone settlement of any considerable size": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermont.
- barking 6y agoIt's much cooler that Dunkirk should hold this distinction, isn't it, so can we agree please that these rather undistinguished places in Canada don't count? Anyway Dunkirk is a proper town/city (91K people, interesting history) not like this awful sounding place where everyone lives in a single building because it's like the moon there or something.
- eloff 6y agoHere's another one: the majority of Canada's population actually lives south of the 49 parallel, which for the most part is the US border. The reason is most of the population is in Ontario and Quebec, and the majority of that population is south of the 49th. The southernmost part of Canada at Niagara falls is actually at the same latitude as northern California. Which is why it is a big wine growing region.
- ddlatham 6y agoAs a native to the US west coast, I was very surprised to realize that Toronto, Ontario is further south than Portland, Oregon.
- altoidaltoid 6y agoI always refer to my Toronto colleagues ( I am in Seattle ) as Southerners...
- naveens 6y agoDistortions of the Mercator Projection...
- 6y ago
- simias 6y agoIn general latitude comparisons between Europe and the USA are always surprising to me because of the very different climates. New York is to the south of Marseille for instance. Florida lines up with the southern (disputed) regions of Morocco.
- barking 6y agoThere's also the odd fact that the lands to the east and the west of Greenland aren't ice covered while Greenland is (Google maps satellite view).
- dboreham 6y agoWhere I grew up in Southern Scotland (some years get no snow) is at the same latitude as places Polar Bears live in Canada.
- BurningFrog 6y agoSome of these mysteries clear up when you understand inland climate vs coastal climate. The ocean changes temperature very slowly. In summer it's colder than land, and in winter it's warmer. This acts to keep land temperature semi stable over the seasons. Inland there are no such dampeners. Summers get real hot and winters are very cold. Which is why Edmonton probably (I haven't checked) has much colder winters than northern Norway.
- barking 6y agoAlso very importantly Europe gets the Gulf stream to keep it mild
- BurningFrog 6y agoI have heard that's a myth, and it's really just that the North Atlantic is big and the prevailing winds go east. I haven't done the deep research to confirm that, so just take this a me spreading a rumor.
- barking 6y agoWell that would be a turn up for the books because one of the often mentioned bad consequences of global warming is a loss of the North Atlantic Drift (gulf stream) from Europe and us ending up with a climate similar to what the same latitude of Canada has.