To be fair, reporting the the wind chill factor is very meaningful for health and safety reasons almost everywhere so proper warning is given about people spending time outside. Minneapolis, and the bigger Canadian cities have those inside walkways and pedestrian pathways, but they're not that common elsewhere. I don't think Chicago does for example, and we don't have that here in Buffalo. Contrary to the rumors, 0F with -40F wind chills are NOT very common around here. People need to be warned to take this weather seriously. You might be used to it, but not everyone in a native that can say that. To the 'infrastructure' question, I think the biggest concerns would be power related. Although we have a DC in Buffalo that is cooled on ambient outside air that has the opposite problem ; it's TOO cold at the moment, so we are cycling most of the hot server exhaust back into the computer rooms to maintain temperatures. On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 11:52 AM Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
Being a Minnesota native, I can tell you that while it is indeed cold, this is nothing new i the Great White North :) I am amaze a how consistently the media overplays the severity of Midwest cold weather as some kind of unique phenomenon. They amplify this by reporting the wind-chill factor, which is the “what it feels like” equivalent in a cold and windy environment. But equipment feels nothing, so windchill is irrelevant.
For example, Minneapolis is -20F, but the news media instead reports “-60F wind chill”, which, while dramatic, is not meaningful for most purposes. I grew up in Minnesota with -30F and lower quite common, and we walked to school in those temperatures. You just have to dress well. Minneapolis is paved with tunnels and heated skyways to eliminate most outdoor walking downtown.
As far as networks go, none of the ISPs I know of do anything different than anywhere else in the country. Everyone has backup power. It’s already common practice everywhere to exploit cooler winter ambient temperatures to reduce HVAC requirements, so that’s not new either. But it gets as hot in the Midwest in our summer as it is in SA for you now, so everyone must still build out HVAC capacity to cover the hottest days.
-mel beckman
On Jan 30, 2019, at 8:40 AM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka@seacom.mu> wrote:
For anyone running IP networks in the Midwest, are you having to do anything special to keep your networks up?
For the data centres, is this cold front a chance to reduce air conditioning costs, or is it actually straining the infrastructure?
I'm curious, from a +27-degree C summer's day here in Johannesburg.
Mark.