5 ms·
Note that their sub-zero is Centigrade. Without wind, -5C or 23F is generally considered a nice winter day in most snowy places. From experience, I'd like to a
by OldSchool 14y ago
Note that their sub-zero is Centigrade. Without wind, -5C or 23F is generally considered a nice winter day in most snowy places.
From experience, I'd like to add that the myth of "once it's below -X it doesn't really matter" is just not true. -50F feels WAYYYY colder than -25F for example.
- _delirium 14y agoThat's one thing that's nice about coastal Nordic cities: much warmer than you might think, certainly compared to places like Eastern Europe or inland Canada. Even in February, the average daytime temperature still gets up to 31 F in Stockholm, 36 F in Copenhagen, and 29 F in Helsinki.
- killerpopiller 14y agointeresting, but can't we use the metric system as well, plz?
- _delirium 14y agoEh, I tend to just go with whatever the person I reply to uses, or whatever majority usage in the audience I'm talking to is, which is why I used Fahrenheit here despite the fact that I live in Copenhagen and my own thermometers are in C. I'd use the metric system for scientific purposes, but for daily life I'm pretty comfortable with whatever mixture people want to use among such old friends as F, C, pints, oz, mL, cL, stones, kg, lbs, megabytes, mebibytes. They could hardly be weirder than the Danish numbering system!
- mixmax 14y agoHow is the Danish numbering system weird? I ask as a curious Dane.
- _delirium 14y agoWell there isn't anything weird with the counting or mathematical usage, just the names for them seem not to use a typical decimal system. For example, in English and Norwegian, 75 and 82 are straightforward compounds of "7,5" and "8,2". In English, seventy-five, eighty-two; in Norwegian, syttifem, åttito. But in Danish, 70 isn't syv-something. Instead it seems it's halvfjerds, which sounds like half a fjerd, except a fjerd is not a number. ;-) And even more confusingly, 50 sounds awfully like half-60. From what I've read, it used to be "half four twenty" (halvfjerdsindstyve), where "half four" is an archaic way of saying 3½, so 3½ 20 = 70. Which later, I suppose, got contracted into halvfjerds. Admittedly you can just treat them like opaque symbols to memorize, so I doubt anyone thinks of 75 as "5 and 3½ x 20". But the Norwegian numbers seem more orderly...
- mixmax 14y agoAh, yes that is weird once you start thinking about it. As a native speaker I've never given it a second thought, but I can certainly see how it would be confusing.
- salvadors 14y agoThat's sort-of similar (though even weirder than) French[1], where, where you sometimes count in twenties instead of tens. So instead of sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one, it's (the equivalent of) sixty-nine, sixty-ten, sixty-eleven. And eighty is really four-twenties, so ninety-five is four-twenties-and-fifteen, etc. Of course, English used to be like this too — thus "three score years and ten". And many languages still retain non-decimalised words for eleven and twelve (and sometimes powers of them, like a gross or mass.) -- [1] Well, French French. Swiss French and Belgian French are much more sensible.
- madmoose 14y agoWe still have halvanden (half second or 1.5), but apparently half third, half fourth, half fifth, etc., used to be common too.
- jmspring 14y agoThat being said, I've been in Stockholm and Tallinn with temperatures between -15 and -30C in Feb. Coming from the west coast, that was an interesting endeavor. Measured temp is one thing, wind chill is another.
- _delirium 14y agoFor Stockholm and Copenhagen below -15 C would be very rare (but looks like Talinn is rather colder). The record low in Copenhagen is -18 C, and in Stockholm -16 C, at least as measured wherever their official weather stations are (probably near the coast). In Copenhagen, -3 to +3 are more typical; older Danish apartments' relatively poor insulation is barely capable of dealing with -10 C! But it is indeed often quite windy.
- tarre 14y agoThe record low in Stockholm is -26, not -16 C. At least according to wikipedia.
- ptaipale 14y agoWas about to say the same, Stockholm surely sometimes gets colder than -16°C. Without looking any stats, probably -16°F (which is -27°C). For Helsinki, which not much further to the north, but closer to continental Russia, the record lows are -34°C / -30°F. And I slept outside in temperatures colder than this, my children did, and their children eventually will. It's a matter of proper clothing.
- Create 14y agoyes -- I was chucked out, and I'm not Nordic. Actually my mother told our new neighbours when they got kids, that it doesn't harm, at all.
- thedufer 14y ago> -50F feels WAYYYY colder than -25F for example. My experience is that this is true in the long-term, but if you're only outside for a few minutes, you won't notice the difference unless it's windy.
- OldSchool 14y agoProperly dressed for it, I noticed it mostly in that I coughed instantly upon taking the first few breaths outdoors. Never had experienced that at as low as -30F or so prior. Yes, wind... enough wind can ruin your day at any temperature.
- dhughes 14y ago-20C is a nice day if there isn't any wind, a bit of humidity helps too. Today it was -3C but very windy and dry it felt like -50C after coming out of a warm office!