Wipha Sucked But Krosa Blew

Back a couple weeks I wrote about Typhoon Wipha coming to wipe Suzhou and the rest of China’s eastern seaboard off the map. It failed to do so.

The other day all the reports seemed to indicate Krosa was coming to do the same. Nada. However, what it did do was give Suzhou that long-needed push into Autumn.

I put pants on for the first time in nearly 5 months this morning.

Suzhou’s seasons, or lack of them, is something both greatly interesting and constantly confounding for this Canuck. I just don’t get how a place can go from being scorchingly hot to relentlessly cold in a bat of an eye.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a Spring/Autumn person that it pisses me off so much that I get cheated of those seasons. I was speaking to a classmate today and she mentioned that she remembers before coming here seeing the mean temperature of Suzhou being something like a comfortable 18°C. She, like the rest of us, now knows it averages out to that because it’s stupidly hot for 5.5 months, retardedly cold for 5.5 months, and livable for just a few weeks a year.

Meh, Autumn’s here now, and Krosa also managed to blow Suzhou’s near perpetual greyness away – I should get off here and enjoy the one clear blue day of average temperature we get a year.

NB: I realize I bitch about the climate in Suzhou quite a bit, and it really is that craptastic. However, it’s a testament to the city’s coolness that I still love living here, despite the bloody weather.

4 Responses

  1. I’m with you man. I’m in Taixing right now, a small city not too far from Suzhou, and the weather is fantastic. I only come here about 2 days out of the week, but every time it’s been drab and crappy. I’m finally getting to see this little town in a lovely light.
    South Jiangsu rocks today…

  2. “retardedly cold for 5.5 months”

    Blimey! And you were in Dalian before!

    It is starting to get cold here too though, around 14 degrees (nax) this week compared to 24 degrees (max also) a couple of weeks ago.

    Ha! At least we have central heating (albeit not turned on yet).

  3. @Jason: Right, I read on your blog that you were doing a couple days a week of teaching there. Suzhou is greyer than an elephant’s ass.

    @Alex: Yeah, the cold surprised me too. In Dalian you know how to handle it. You look outside, it’s icy and you prepare appropriately. Here it sneaks into you, wraps itself around your soul and doesn’t let go until the two weeks of Spring hit. And yeah – no heating more than what the air con blows out and what I can generate bitching about it all.

  4. I’m jealous… you get winter. The seasons of Shenzhen are: short-term comfortable, hot, hot and humid, and I’m not stepping outside because it’s too freaking hot and humid.

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