Doesn’t this trio look stylish for a winter’s day romp in Walkerville in the early 1900s? But are they warm enough? Despite their massive fur muffs (check out that middle one with its assortments of fur tails!) and sturdy hats, they don’t look especially warm to me. It appears there is a cold wind blowing and their coats seem a bit thin.
But look! They’re smiling so maybe it’s not all that cold really. Perhaps there’s even been a bit of a thaw; it does seem like a bright sunny day in fact.
Charlie Fox sent me this photo of his mom, Martha Heydon, standing between two friends in the backyard of a row house on Monmouth Road. Monmouth is still lined with these handsome brick homes built for his employees by distiller Hiram Walker in the early 1900s in his company town of Walkerville.
Let’s fast forward a hundred years or so to see what kind of winter we’re going to have. Ah, the weather person says Windsor’s 2011/12 winter will not be overly snowy. Good. Our average precipitation this winter is predicted to be 190 mm (snow and rain). Temperatures are expected to be somewhat higher than average too.
But wait a tick! Why does it say Yellowknife will only get an average of 43 mm?
I just had to investigate this strange phenomenon since Yellowknife is soooo far north. It’s way up in the North West Territories, only a few hours from the Arctic Circle for goodness sake!
So just why is Windsor going to get over four times as much precipitation?!
The answer is due to science and geography. After reaching a certain point below zero it will not snow. It gets VERY cold in Yellowknife, which is one of the coldest capital cities on planet Earth. It’s -26 Celsius there right now (9 pm our time on November 28) while it’s a balmy 4 degrees here. As for geography, Yellowknife is not mountainous (mountains get lots of snow) nor does it get much lake effect snow like southern cities located near large bodies of water do.
I pity the residents of St. John’s, Newfoundland, which is located just about the furthest east you can possibly go in Canada and sits almost on the shore of the ccccold Atlantic Ocean. Their winter’s average precip is expected to be 424 mm.
Somehow 190 mm doesn’t sound so bad, after all.
To read about Monmouth Road click here. If you enjoy old photos of Windsor, you might like to get or give a copy of our latest history book, Windsor Then – a pictorial essay of Windsor, Ontario’s glorious past. For availability, click here.