71–80 of 137 posts
A fun fact that usually trips people up is that the southern most point in Canada[1] is actually as far south as the North end of California. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelee,_Ontario
Gotta love geography!
The northernmost french community (of appreciable size) in the world is the remote mining town of Fermont ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermont ), in Quebec near the border with Labrador. It has ~3000 inhabitants, and is based around a large bunker/building containing housing, shops, schools, etc, which let's people live their lives in the winter without having to go outside. The second northernmost French communit…
I had no idea. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't know that being from the same province.
Canada also isn't as big as you think, as hinted at in the article. It's still big though. Try asking people which they think is bigger, Greenland or Brazil. Brazil is of course much, much bigger but projections can be deceiving if you've only looked at flat maps.
South Africa is about the size of Alaska, but it doesn't look like that on most flat globe-projections. Draw a shape around SA in Google's MyMaps, and then drag that shape up to Alaska. The shape grows about 3x bigger.
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It's a little misleading, because climate zones are just based on minimum average temperatures. British winters are similar to Texan winters, but British summers are more like Alaskan summers.
> British winters are similar to Texan winters Hmm. That's not so bad. What does everyone complain about? > but British summers are more like Alaskan summers You poor, poor people. Though they probably say the same about our 100F (~38C) summers.
If I never had to experience 100F heat again (excepting saunas), then I would die a happy man.
This is missing the point. People think of Canadians as tough hardy, northerners because it's -8C in Toronto and we've been having really nice February, last year it was like -20C all month. It's -12 in Montreal right now. It's still interesting to think about it but don't try to imply that it's not actually cold, bitter and rough sledding here because we're "south" of London. Because it's 8C in London right now.
The point is that many Americans treat 'Canada' as a bucket in which everything is cold weather. And yet the whole swathe of the northern states Minnesota, North Dakota, upper Michigan, etc. are _significantly_ further north and colder than where the bulk of the Canadian population is. I once had a coworker from Atlanta at our office in Toronto. Overheard him on the phone talking to his wife, gobsmacked by the cold,…
Actually, I think the climate on the south side of Lake Ontario is a bit warmer and wetter (thus the lake effect snow). The cold air is moderated a bit as it crosses over the lakes, but it also picks up all that moisture. In fact, I think the windward side of all the Great Lakes are similar and might be in different climate zones vs the leeward side of the lakes. I know in Western Michigan for example there is a bit of a fruit belt because of this.
Canada also isn't as big as you think, as hinted at in the article. It's still big though. Try asking people which they think is bigger, Greenland or Brazil. Brazil is of course much, much bigger but projections can be deceiving if you've only looked at flat maps.
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>everyone in New England This is pretty silly. I just did some measurements in Google maps and not a single point in Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Rhode Island is even close to 100 miles from the Canadian border.
I didn't day 100 anything. I said near. The people of new england are near ports for trade with the "old world" of europe, just as canadians are near the great lakes. The boarder was all about ports, not population, even in the west. It's all about the waterways to the world, not being within some magic distance to any boarder as the crow flies.
When people say something is "near" something else they mean its geographically close. You were replying specifically to "Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border," in the comments of an article specifically about geography, which makes your "near" definition make even less sense. You might as well say "New York City is like in Chicago's back yard since you can get there by boat." or "Bergen is near Miami because they are both on the Atlantic Ocean."
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Well, that escalated quickly.
Yeah, I guess - but hey in my own defence, as somebody working with distributed systems I've seen too many a simplistic world-view blow up in my own face :) Even though I'm not a fan of it, there is a reason for the old ops adage of "never touch a running system". Complexity is hard (i.e. global climate) and even if life on earth is essentially anti-fragile that might not include our own cohort. Also, I just might ha…
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TIL Texas isn't as warm as I thought...
It's a little misleading, because climate zones are just based on minimum average temperatures. British winters are similar to Texan winters, but British summers are more like Alaskan summers.
This is missing the point. People think of Canadians as tough hardy, northerners because it's -8C in Toronto and we've been having really nice February, last year it was like -20C all month. It's -12 in Montreal right now. It's still interesting to think about it but don't try to imply that it's not actually cold, bitter and rough sledding here because we're "south" of London. Because it's 8C in London right now.
The point is that many Americans treat 'Canada' as a bucket in which everything is cold weather. And yet the whole swathe of the northern states Minnesota, North Dakota, upper Michigan, etc. are _significantly_ further north and colder than where the bulk of the Canadian population is. I once had a coworker from Atlanta at our office in Toronto. Overheard him on the phone talking to his wife, gobsmacked by the cold,…