30 km per hour winds in singapore, and it's called strong winds. try 35 miles per hour winds which is roughly about 56km per hour. and consider that with winds like that during this period of the year... there's wind chill factor.

so essentially, when i left the house this morning at 7.40am, it was a bone-chilling -10 degrees. with wind chill factored in, it was -20 degrees. =/

as some pple might have read in ST, there was a snow emergency on sat night/sun morning after the snow storm. 6 inches of snow, that melted and refroze. and one day later, madison's still dealing with the aftermath of an intense snow-bath. literally. the snow is all now melted-and-refrozen ice. huge expanses of ice. all around campus.

at least the roads are all cleared now, and the pavements are... relatively paved. most of it anyway. but at areas where pavement meets roads (like at crossing junctions) it's knee-high mounds of ice. walking to class this morning reminded me of climbing up a mountain - slipping and sliding your way down icy walkways, clambering over mountains of ice, sinking into a footprint that someone before you created...

and this morning, shovelling of most staircases weren't done yet... so essentially in my attempts to get to class, i had to try and walk up a non-existent staircase to reach Science Hall. All buried in snow, the only way was to find crevices in the huge ice-rock and propel myself up. and Lathrop Hall was essentially just ... honestly, a mountain climb up the supposed stair case haha.

oh well it's an experience i guess. an experience that i've had one too many times... oh the joys of living in Madison.

so like thousands of pple had their electricity cut off cos of the snow. honestly, we have it good in Singapore. yeah on the raw occasion, we do get major floods. heavy rain days are inconvenient and the weather's hot and humid. but when it's this cold, you risk frost bite and other perils. with snow, you get major inconveniences like icy roads which lead to a large number of accidents on the road. you get snowed in. and you lose yr electricity which means you have NO heat at home. in this sort of weather, tt's prob the worse thing tt can happen.

and you can't do anything abt it. you can't get all the ice to melt when the weather's so cold, you can't stop the snow from falling and creating messes, you can't really prevent icy conditions. i'm glad for tropical weather. even though i love the seasons - each and every one of them, even though i enjoy to a morbid perverse extent, the cold weather... despite all that, i'm glad we have it good. it honestly makes it so much easier for us. honestly. when you stare nature in the face, you realise how powerless man really is.

so thank God for our location, with no hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, snow storms and other bizzare weather conditions... ah Singapore's a good place to live in =)