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Comment by vijucat | Hacker News Reader

This might seem a bit superficial, but one of the reasons I fear a move to Canada is the weather; not the weather per se, but whether someone like me born in a tropical country would adjust well to the cold? I'm concerned that I would relapse into a depression ushered in by the winter blues (used to be depressed in my 20s, not sure why, it went away after 30, not sure why either), and lose my productivity. As a separate topic, it's slightly unsettling how much the ability to work hard defines many of us.

For context, I was born in South India and currently live + work in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the temperature is around the same number as you see for, say, Victoria, BC, except for that the former is in Celsius while the latter is in Fahrenheit! :-)

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For Indians with in-demand qualifications like technology:

First year snow is fun specially if you never seen snow or live for extended period.

Second year snow is okay.

Third year oh! crap snow again.

Fourth year snow is drudgery.

Fifth year snow again! I can't wait to get out.

Sixth year, as you reaching snow season, I got my Canadian citizenship, I am moving south.

Thanks for sharing! I suppose citizenship + TN visa isn't a bad combination. Where exactly South? California, I suppose :-) (for the weather)

I can't speak for you, obviously, but I was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada as a child. The first winter was pretty brutal, but mostly because my family had to basically learn how to dress for winter weather, entirely from scratch.

But it's a complete non-issue now.

Keep in mind it also depends on where you settle in Canada. My family settled in Vancouver where the weather is fairly mild and rarely below freezing. If you are in, say, Ottawa (which also has a tech presence), you will sometimes see -20C to -30C weather. That's much rougher to deal with.

There are many Indian-Canadians who live in Vancouver as well as the Toronto area (among other places, but those two seem to be where the concentration is), you may be able to reach out to some of them and figure out the climate problem.

Thanks for sharing! I'll try to hook up with some relatives in Toronto and see what they have to say!

Having lived high in the Rocky Mountains and in Singapore (and various intermediate climes), it's my personal impression that "hot" people have a harder time in cold weather than "cold" people have in hot weather. Aircon is great! The thing is, you can adjust. When I visited central India with an Indian-American friend, both of us were in short-sleeved shirts the whole time, while his family were bundled in all the sweaters and coats they had and were still cold. (It was late January I believe.)

I think because in most "cold" places the summer still gets pretty hot.

Temperatures in Canada are measured in Celsius, not Fahrenheit. So that could be the source of your confusion.

However there's no confusion about how cold -40 is!

Just having an outdoor heater that needed daily refuelling (in itself a small miracle) was an excellent way to learn how to guess the temperature by the effects on eyelids, lips, ears and nose.

-40: move (while you can), especially if there is some wind to go with it.

In Canada, it might be -40 K.

There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.

Ah, wait until the dead of winter when you're trying to take the bus to work in -40C weather. Walking across a large parking lot, with snow billowing along the ground like a National Geographic special on the Arctic Circle, your face in excruciating pain because of high-speed snow/ice blowing into it.

The fact that your arms and legs are toasty warm seems like a distant comfort at that point...

Plenty of weather conditions in Canada where, no matter how well you dress, you're just not going to be comfortable...

Don't forget the ice that forms on the inside surface of your glasses below about -10º.

And the way you can be sweating on one part of your body even as another part is being frost-bitten. Then when you adjust your coats and scarfs the sweating part will cool down and the sweat will start to freeze leading to frostbite there, too.

Ugh. "Ice sweats" I call it. It's pretty bad when you've got a scarf wrapped around your face, and your breath condenses into ice that makes the scarf hard with ice.

Then when you go indoors all the ice melts and your scarf turns into a goopy mess.

Oh Ontario winters, how I do not miss thee.

Global warming will clean it up anyway.

I have seriously never encountered this problem. They fog up when you go from outdoor cold to a warm building, but I've never had my glasses ice up.

What he said was an old Scandinavian saying.

Is it really that bad as long as you only need to get from A to B in something like an urban environment, though? Most of my problems with the cold have been switching clothes because of variations in activity levels, and having to actually work outside in the cold (for example having to take off my gloves because they aren't nimble enough with them on).

I'm assuming you had something like a balaclava on in those extreme conditions? If that wasn't enough you also have more wind-proof headgear: people use them to drive snow mobiles, so they should be good enough for the purpose of getting to the bus.

I went to school in Waterloo, ON, Canada. I have walked multiple kilometers to class in weather that was -20 C or below. I'm not going to say it was like being on a warm beach, but geez, long underwear, a scarf, a hat, some thick mitts and a decent coat go a long way to getting a lot closer to comfortable. It's not cheap I suppose, but it's not complex.

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