Ken, northern part of India is unusually cold this year, as you can see from this report. You can see some "locals warming" in the picture!

NDTV news report on North India and cold wave

They do look chilly. Three degrees C here though means we think twice about swimming, but then go ahead and swim anyway.

Here's a video that includes some info on the NAO (somewhere around the middle, but the whole video is informative).

The negative phase of the NAO happens when there is a high pressure system in the Arctic and a low pressure system over the Azores (memory again). Unfortunately for Europe there is evidence that less ice over the north pole increases the chances of having a high pressure system develop.

We're a bit lucky this year. The cold air is spilling to the sides of us so we're having a warmer winter than usual. Last night we did get some spillage and the temps dropped to -25 (still warmer than -30 to -40 that we used to get, but it was the coldest night of the winter so far, by about 6 degrees). It will go back up to plus 2 around Tuesday, but drop that night to -19. Quite the yo-yo ride.

It has been cold in Tucson. We have had a number of nights around 20 F--I don't know what that is in Canuck degrees. It's warmer now, but still around 38 F at night.

20 F is about -7 C, which is not a Canuck degree but a measurement used by every developed and developing country around the world, with the exception of Belize, Jamaica, and one other silly nation that escapes me at the moment.

13 F is toque-weather, least it is now that I'm losing hair on my poor head.

Maybe if you stuck with Fahrenheit your hair wouldn't be leaving. I mean, what sounds worse, 20 F or -7C? If you were hair, wouldn't you go to some warmer place?

It did--inside my ears. Must be nature's way of making you less attractive so you don't reproduce using old genes.

And yet, that didn't work for you, did it?

Yeah, I'm stumped on that one.

Kelvin is the only real system. That's the one where 0 actually means 0. Celsius (or "Centigrade", as we called it back in the day), a temperature scale based around water, is all wet.

Besides, neither Anders Celsius nor Daniel Fahrenheit were Lords, now were they?

Well, when you hit zero K, you've hit bottom.

Any of you see that PBS show on getting to zero K? It may be impossible. Interesting show.