For the people of Karachi it has been a little cold these past few days with even the sprinkling of few showers that made the weather a little more chilly. Overall the winter has evaded us as it has been doing for past few years.
I remember Karachi having a long decent spell of winter and even rain accompanied by hail during this season.
Winter was much celebrated with the rolling out of winter wear that had been carefully cleaned, wrapped and stored away after the last winter showed signs of abetting. Dry fruits would be enjoyed as also the various dishes that are for one reason or the other associated with winter.
Presently, dry fruits are a little out of reach for the common man and specially the much sought after pine nuts whose meteoric climb in prices have placed them out of reach from not only the common man but the well-to-do and affluent in society.
All said and done the cold weather in Karachi is not really that cold but you only realize that when you experience cold in a really cold country. Do you have any idea how cold it can be? Let us look at some really cold countries.
The coldest city in the world is Yakutsk in Siberia, Russia. During January, the average low temperature is -42°C, and the city gets less than four hours of sunlight per day.
No this is not some deserted outpost of Russia. Yakutsk has a population of 355,000 people, this city surprisingly also gets quite hot in summer with temperatures reaching an average high of 78.8 F around July. For being the coldest place on the planet however the winner is the East Antarctica Plateau in Antarctica with a bone-chilling minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 98 degrees Celsius),according to NASA.
Living with such extreme temperatures requires a very regimented and careful lifestyle as I learnt when I moved to Ottawa, Canada, in 1976. I had never seen snowfall in my life and always considered it to be a lot of fun. I was so eager to watch my first snowfall that I would frequently ask my supervisor Bernie at my work place when it will start snowing. He finally got fed up one day and retorted “You won’t be so eager for snowfall once you start shoveling it”. I later realized the wisdom of his words.
The snowfall came but then came the hard work of shoveling it off your drive way and removing it from your car which sometimes disappeared under the snow. It was not just shoveling snow but one had to streamline their entire lives to adjust to the change in temperature and resultant chal lenges.
Just before the expected first snowfall you had to make sure that your tires were changed so they could handle the icy conditions on the road. Also in all houses and apartment blocks there were small lamp posts with space for plug-ins.
Everyone parked their vehicle close to a lamp post and plugged in their cars to this power outlet as every car also has a plug hanging out which when connected to the power source ensures warm air circulating in your engine all night. If you fail to plug in your radiator would be frozen solid by morning.
Something quite dangerous for drivers is icy rain. This is snowfall that by the time it reaches ground level turns to ice. Your wiper becomes useless as after a while instead of pushing it out it starts sliding on it and soon you have an icy sheet blocking your view.
Time to get out and take out the small metal scrappers every driver has and scrape the ice off. Doing this time and again in minus twenty degrees is not an easy task. I remember during one winter the day time temperature was minus 20 and the night time minus 30.
It was only due to this state of preparedness which is part of the Canadian lifestyle that people survived. The remarkable thing is that those responsible for clearing the roads and highways even after major snowstorms do such an immaculate job that even after a major snow storm at night the roads are ready for commuters by early morning.
The weather is now changing worldwide and who knows we too will be one day faced with such extreme weather. So far we seem ill prepared for it as a few inches of rain are enough to wreak havoc in our lives. Let us hope we improve in the days to come and are able to enjoy weather changes without facing catastrophes.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
The writer is a well-known columnist
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