Two observations: I’ve hit an age where I can’t remember if my weather app has been set to Celsius or Fahrenheit, and Astana’s temperatures are now low enough that I can’t tell what the temperature is without double checking if I set it for C or F. Sure, it’s cold but make no mistake winter this year isn’t nearly as bad as the last one, or the one before that, they all say. Plus, I still “don’t know what real cold is” according to my wizened, embassy colleagues.
Either way, the Ishim River has frozen over allowing for additional meandering and winter sports. Ice skating, tubing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, and cold water dunks. In fact, winter wonderland popups are all around the city and they are too cute to pass up with all the holiday cheer, music, and neon lights. The happiness distracts us from the worn gray sky, or the cloudless blue sky that robs of us short wave radiation.
With the snowfall, plows, bull dozers, diggers, dump trucks, and roll onto the streets with their gangs of orange clad workers armed with iron rods, shovels, and sleds. This spectacle, depending on your affinity for construction vehicles, is also too cute to pass up and watch. The snow moving feat is impressive. Piles of snow sometimes 20-30 feet tall and 50 feet wide, are removed within hours. Thick gravel-ice-snow layers that have been left behind are painstakingly chipped and hauled away.
During the 2023-2024 season, the Mayor of Astana reported they removed 4.5 million cubic meters of snow, enough to fill 2,500 Olympic sized pools. Last month (12/19/24) during a hearty snow fall, the city removed 16,000 cubic meters of snow in a single night the equivalent of nearly 6.5 Olympic sized pools. I feel like that is a lot. I also feel the “a lot-ness” when I spend three hours shoveling our own driveway and sidewalks but I feel it most when our path is finally cleared and a drive-by plow blocks us back in. It’s good exercise, I keep telling myself.
For the dog walks, a long coat, Boggs boots, mittens, fleece hat, and a balaclava over long underwear and sweater fill the not-cold (but not totally warm either) requirement. My kids do just fine with a hat, gloves, snow pants, winter jacket, and boots over shorts and t-shirts for school, where they inevitably roast inside. And Mark-the-Furnace-Schlink wears little beyond a coat and hat. He’s practically naked as far as I am concerned. And I am okay with that too.
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