Remember The Snag...!

You know that you're becoming lethargic when you not only accept the worst - but begin to commemorate it, too. Once again, Google Doodle leads the way and sets the example for all lethargics-to-be out there by coming out in a celebratory mood in regards to the coldest day in recorded history (February 3rd, 1947) - as far as that icy hellhole called Canada is concerned, anyways!  (Is there any icier place on Earth? Save for Siberia, Scandinavia and either Pole - no!  Just ask the penguins or the seals when you can visit either the North or the South Pole...! Don't bother the bears up north, though: they'll just growl at you, seeing as they are quite grumpy these days over that whole sordid global warming ''myth'' thing, eh... But we're digressing here...)

''Digital Reporter'' Dan Martins added the story to the Weather Network, too:  not much of a ''report'' as the article is about two paragraphs long, but maybe ''reporting'' is at its best when it does nothing but just that: report something in the briefest way possible! Just leave the analysis to us deep thinker-bloggers, guys: it will be just fine (and at its finest too) that way, you'll see...! But we're digressing some more now...

Such a debilitatingly sad story to read (when all you want is winter to END... especially 24 hours removed from Groundhog Day!) should be a part of the wretched Weather Network though - no doubt about that...! All they ever have for us are disappointing news overall, no matter which way we can look at them: forecasts contrary to our plans, turns for the worst when we expect a fully-merited respite from that awful Old Man Winter (or that bitchy Mother Nature - pin the blame where you will...) and terrible surprises whenever they got it wrong...  If there had been a Weather Network back in 1947, the fine denizens and upstanding citizens (about 30 people in all!) populating that remote area of Snag, Yukon (which is found on the southwestern tip of the territory, imagine that...!  What if it was on the northeastern side!) would have hated it so intensely for having most likely failed to warn them of the stunning dip in temperatures... But we're... speculating now.

One imagines Snap, Yukon as some kind of place straight out of the exotic locales used for the 1967 (hey - a mere twenty years later!) classic Fearless Vampire Killers.  Now that film sure looked like it was made in harsh winterish conditions!  (Some cast members resembled displaced Inuits, too: only with fangs, this time.  But that's another story!)  Snag is neither Russian nor American territory though: it stands as firmly Canadian coldsnapped-in-permanence soil.  Ironically, though, they were using the Fahrenheit scale in 1947 and, so, the record cold temperature was registered as a most-horrifying minus 81.4 degrees! Imagine that Americans use the Fahrenheit to continuously avoid dipping into below zero temperatures: even when we reach minus 10 just across the border in the east, it is still a reassuring 10 to 15 degrees in Vermont, for instance! But in forlorn places such as their Alaska and their neighbors' Yukon, there is nothing that can spare you from the bone-chilling freeze-over effect, folks - if you're in for it, you will know it! And you will feel it, too!

On February the 3rd, 1947, people at the airport and around the town of Snag, Yukon, did feel it all right: they felt the difference big time.  Officially in the record books as minus 63 degrees Celsius (because that is how Canadians measure their temperature now - and because it is not as frightful a figure, also!) that infamous day is chronicled in detail by various accounts telling how the density of the cold air altered so many things, beyond the mere fact that it was insufferably cold of course.  Gordon M. Toole was the weather officer-in-charge who noticed in the morning of the 3rd that the thermometer had dipped even further from the lowest point it had reached the previous day, when he checked it out as he always did, at 7 o'clock in the morning sharp. That awful finding was soon confirmed by the main office of the Canadian Weather Service, in Toronto.

Mr. Toole wrote such astonishing things about that day: such as his mere breath freezing up in thin air with a hissing sound, before collapsing on the ground and dispersing as white dust.  Another frightful sound was heard over the frozen river: this time, a booming one as the ice in the nearby White River (well-named, eh) was cracking, producing such noises ''like gunfire'' he wrote.

Modern climatologist (and a bit of a historian too, eh) David Phillips loves to retell as to write about this sorry record mark posted by Canada: in books such as the also very aptly-named (considering it is authored by the senior climate expert at Environment Canada!) ''Blame It On The Weather'' (or on Canada - said South Park scribes, with good reason!) he recounts in detail all the side-effects of such a God-awful cold snap in Snag...!  ''Sound itself traveled differently in cold, dense air: everyone sounds closer than they really are. A major temperature inversion like this caused sound waves to bend backward and bounce off the ground continuously without ever dissipating up in the air; as a result, the dogs barking five kilometers away or the people taking in town were heard crystal-clear at the airport. Ground visibility was greatly reduced. At about arm’s length, an eerie, dull grey shroud of patchy ice fog hung above the dogs and heated buildings.''

Fascinating, n'est-ce pas? And ghastly, too!  Snag evokes a very scary place described like this: when nothing could be further from the truth! Historical photos found in various places online show us that it wasn't that bad a place to live in at all.  In fact, it looks like a nothing-happening smalltown like any other: and, trust us, there are zillions of those all across North America, folks!  (So much for the American Dream, eh?  As for any ''Canadian  Dream'' there might be, for all of those seeking a new lease on existence - well, the Portuguese nailed it in the bud when they reportedly (and quite unintentionally) gave it its name way, way back then, as they sailed on towards warmer waters whilst leaving behind a sign that read ''Nem Cana Dà...!'' Google Translate that... EH!)

But we've written more about this than Danny Boy, D.R. and Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen combined - I think all that is left to say is that: yes, it is damn cold but YES - it could be much colder still!  EH, you never know: Nunavut might set a new mark soon? What, with all those crazy weather fluctuations we've been experiencing, the wacky patterns that it has been taking which have no rhyme and no sense, and all the nonsense that it has yielded as a result: stuff about a new Ice Age all the way down to a shifting of the Poles...!  All the more reason to shift onto lethargic mode, I guess, and just stay in bed... hibernate... like the bears... not the same bears we mentioned earlier, though!

A new Ice Age and brand new North and South Poles! With a myriad record freezing-like-hell temperatures all along the merry way...!

You can do it, Canada! EH?
If anyone can, it is you!

Now enjoy the rest of your winter - with Google's blessing, too!

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