The Cold.

So Europe is going through a killer cold snap at the moment and I've got to say, I may be dealing with it marginally better than when I arrived last year. Of course, that may be totally related to the fact that I'm in Munich proper rather than Unterschleissheim, got some friends this time around, not reeling so much with shock, and am living with someone who's not batshit crazy. But let's ignore all of that and discuss aspects of the cold. 


After a moderately mild Winter (which pleased me very much!), the cold is apparently due to a large high pressure system stretching from Siberia across most of Western Europe. I don't really know much about European wind systems so I can't speak for the rest of Europe but for most of the last fortnight, we've had the gorgeous clear blue skies associated with high systems and this is the reason why it's so cold in Munich. Basically, without cloud cover, any heat generated by having a lot of people living in close quarters and with their heaters on is lost into the atmosphere. It's a reverse greenhouse effect! 


For this same reason, it's unbelievably also not been snowing (much) over the past fortnight. Without the low pressure systems keeping cloud around, there's not enough water in the atmosphere for snow to form. No clouds = no snow. You'd think this would please me greatly but, no, it just means the small amount of water on the ground forms hazardous ice on the patches. I've hit the pavement a few times lately, and I tell you, it would have been not so bad stomping through the snow in comparison. 


But to return to the first paragraph, I really do think I am dealing with it much better. Today as the snow clouds rolled in and dumped it's load over the fields around work, we said it did feel as though today was warmer than previous days! The temperature? A sprightly -8C.