What's It Like Outside Today?

It's a normal question: What's it like outside today? and especially if it determines whether we'll need 3 or 4 layers! If we ever wonder how cold it is outside, we could boot up the computer and check the latest weather update or we could buy ourselves a thermometer and stick it outside our window or we could just look out the window.

We have a coal plant out our window and have a perfect view from the 20th floor of the smoke (or steam or general pollution or as Kanyon would say, "clouds") coming out the smoke stacks. Since we've been looking at it for over a year now, we can tell the temperature by the amount of smoke visible on any given day.

(You can also use the same coal plant to determine how close we are to spring. Just check out how much coal is left in the pile. It'll be gone by the time the warm temps come back around!)

Look at the picture above, what's the temperature? By the amount of smoke, it's about -7F (-22C)!