wait for five minutes and it's sure to change

About the only thing that can rival Canadians' national obsession with hockey, is their obsession with the weather. Wander into any conversation in Canada and you are sure to hear talk about the weather. Need to fill an awkward silence in a conversation, throw out a "how 'bout this weather we've been having?" and the conversation springs to life.

A local television station in Toronto (where the news is presented in HD for some reason) has gone crazy with weather coverage. The local weather guy appears to be presenting the weather from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. There's six touch screens behind him with all sorts of maps and statistics. Brand new this week, were 11 weather stations across the GTA. No more simply what the weather is at the airport, there are now 11 different weather measuring stations. It takes an additional 10 minutes to get through the weather now.

In the GTA, people's perception of the weather has shifted. A winter storm has hit, and weather coverage of the storm, which at the time was still 24 hours away dominated the news coverage. Statements like "it's frigid out there" and "welcome to winter" were everywhere. Seriously, it's -11 and snowing, this is fabulous weather in half of Canada, but here it's a storm. Serious wind chills were also reported, however, it was only -20 with the wind chill. I don't know whether it's because of living in the Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan, but come on people, this isn't cold. When it's -30 and -40 with the wind chill, that's frigid.

I think part of the freak out people have about winter storms can be blamed on the media. They whip everyone up into a frenzy before the storm has even hit. They are all competing for who can have the best storm coverage and the storm hasn't even begun. Once it has hit, it's embarrassing, this poor weather reporter (yes, she only reports on the weather) was out and the anchor made her measure the snow that had fallen with a ruler, she's like well it's not quite 5 cm yet, but really there's more to come.

As a result of the panic, school boards were cancelling classes before snow even began to fall. It's crazy. For years, we functioned in winter without problems. Now, the entire city shuts down at the first sight of snow, it's like we were Vancouver, not Toronto.