Yeah. Québec City is further South than Paris; Ottawa is a bit further South than Lyon, Venice or Milan.
“I can see Russia from my house. . . by looking at a map!”
One reason the Pilgrims set up in Massachusetts was the Mediterranean climate. Oh so they thought.
This is why the Gulf Stream current is so important. Without it warming everything on the northeast of the Atlantic, Western Europe’s climate would be like Eastern Canada’s; Scotland is east of northern Labrador, barely south of Greenland.
That in turn is why Europe could actually turn much colder as a consequence of global warming, if global warming were to cause the Atlantic thermohaline circulation system to halt so that the Gulf Stream isn’t being pumped north.
I spent a few months in Scotland some decades ago. Stirling is at the same latitude as Umiujaq, QC on the shores of Hudson Bay. In those days, the pubs in Scotland used to close at 10PM.
If you had a brisk walk and it was summer, you had time, after closing the pub, to climb the local cnoc beag to watch the sun set.
The current is slowing but Europe is actually warming right now due to El Nino. We really don’t know yet how the new patterns will stabilize.
Related - this quiz about which city pairs are further north…
http://www.citymetric.com/transport/metros-heres-why-advertised-travel-times-can-be-misleading-1799
I thought most well-traveled people knew that continental Europe and the U.K. are much further north than their weather would make it seem.
For me, the high note was seeing what is west of the southernmost part of Chile…Chile! I guess I always assumed Australia was in the way, but nope.
On this map, I noticed something similar I had never noticed before. What lies to the east of the northernmost part of Canada - Baffin Island - is Greenland. What lies to the west of its northernmost part is… also Greenland.
Sounds exactly right. Umiujaq is actually a fairly southerly village in the Nunavik region. The most northerly settlement in Québec is Ivujivik, and that’s still a touch further South than Trondheim. The big difference is climate, and the Gulf Stream makes that big difference - even the hardiest Norseman would freeze his nuts off in a Nunavik town in the winter. There’s nothing to moderate the temperature.
The Gulf Stream makes such a difference in Scotland that I used to joke about the international temperature reports I’d see on the Rogers scrolling cable news channel in the 1990s:
Mid-July
- London - 26°
- Paris - 27°
- Rome - 30°
- Athens - 31°
- Aberdeen - 13°
Mid-January
- London - -6°
- Paris - -3°
- Rome - 0°
- Athens - 1°
- Aberdeen - 13°
Goes to show that distance from the equator doesn’t dictate the climate in a certain area.
For me it is one of those things I have always known but that will never stop feeling wrong.
/lives at the latitude of Vancouver, or so they claim.
Yeah, much more comes into play. Dominant winds tend to go west to east, for example, which makes for a great difference between the west and east coast of a large land mass.
“Lessee, Antarctica gets… Antarctica? That can’t be right!”
Yes I know Antarctica is a continent not a country.
I live at the latitude of Vancouver, on the west coast of France: similar climate.
The amazing part is, if you flip he map over, it still works because the world is round.
I prefer to think of it as the US/Canada being much further south than their weather would make it seem. 
I used to go drinking at a bar called 52 Degrees North in the UK fairly often. At least then I knew what latitude I was at.
I’ve seen palm trees growing on the west coast of Scotland. They didn’t grow naturally you understand, they were planted, but they can survive outdoors.
I knew all this from playing with a globe while buzzed. It was pretty entertaining for far too long.
