Cold Winter Un-Wonderland - My Bane :(

Utah's always been considered a 'special' place. It has the worlds weirdest people, smallest towns, and coldest winters.
Alright, maybe Antarctica and Alaska have the coldest winters, but no one really lives there either! Plus, Utah's winters are certainly the craziest! Somewhere between the short span of July and December, our weather goes from a hundred degrees any given day and looking like this:

To a bitter, harsh, cold, often-in-the-negatives environment much like this:

Which, if you think about it, is even more appropriate because there's snow everywhere and not a good place to sit down. :/



In Utah, winters consist of three stages of cold.

1. October: Mornings are frosty, you can see your breath, and if it snowed it wouldn't rain but the snow would melt quickly, turning the world into a wet, dreary environment. Hands and toes are cold.

2. November - Mid-December: Mornings are frosty, but there are generally patches of snow on the ground as well, and there is frost on top of the frost that first appeared (yes, it's a thing). The air is dry because all the moisture is busy causing frost-ception. I leave my trumpet in my locker so my hands can switch back and forth between warming in my pocket to holding my guitar as I walk to school. My hands and toes are always cold and sometimes I find it difficult to play instruments because my cold fingers are so sluggish. The snow is not wet, but sometimes if the day gets warm enough it will melt a bit.

3. Mid-December - February: There is NO moisture in the air. My lungs burn if I try to run any distance because of the lack of moisture, the searing coldness, and the high altitude air (it's this time of year when I remember- "Oh yeah! I live up in the rocky mountains!"). I leave my guitar and trumpet in my locker because my hands will fall off if I have to take them out of my pockets to carry my instruments to school. By the time I get to school in the mornings, (keep in mind the walk to my high school is only about a block), my lips and fingers are in pain and sometimes if I forget to dry my hair after my morning shower it will freeze solid and I can snap pieces off of it. At any given time, I have to warm my hands under hot water for a good ten minutes just to get to the point where I can play an instrument or type on my computer. Life is miserable. Snow is so cold that it feels dry and powdery like sugar in my hands, and parts of the roads turn into perma-frost speed bumps. People don't get speeding tickets anymore, they just crash.

Not that I hate Utah or anything, but as soon as I'm self-sufficient, I'm moving someplace warm. Maybe Pennsylvania. Is it warm there?

Sincerely Cold,
-AdmiralCubie