Meteorological Phenomena

Greetings, gentle readers.
Making the transition from Keflavik to Edmonton is a bit like walking off the set of "Interstellar" and onto the set of "The Day After Tomorrow," a film which has been getting more attention as the worldwide climate change crisis worsens.
In short, Edmonton is cold.  Has been for the past week.  But there's something weird about this cold weather.  As a survivor of numerous –40°C winter days, I can attest that they can be a bit troublesome.  The thing about prairie winters is that they are generally very dry with low humidity in the air.  Any moisture in the air condenses and freezes out as snow or ice, and leaves you with just plain cold air, bereft of most of its water vapour.
Ever wonder why people are comfortable in +5°C weather, to the extent that Steve Martin comments in "Roxanne" that people "...ski topless while smoking dope" while the same temperature of water is used to torment people in the ice water bucket challenge?  Basically, water can absorb heat better than air.  The more water, the more it sucks warmth from your body.  Here's why people in Edmonton are unhappy:

Two things stand out here.  One is that the humidity is 83%.  That's ludicrous, particularly in a landlocked part of the country.  That's a lot of water vapour absorbing heat from things.  How does that much water stay in the air without freezing out?  The barometric pressure is 104.7 kPa.  Normal air pressure at sea level is 101.3 kPa. Basically, much like in the Jake Gyllenhal film I mentioned earlier, there is a dense, cold column of air descending from the upper reaches of the atmosphere, pushing down on the air below, lowering the dew point (or frost point) so that the moisture can't condense out.

TL;DR

We're in a pressure cooker that freezes instead of heats.

Well, that's it for now.  Back again soon.  Thanks to anyone supporting me by reading this inane drivel.
Good night England and the colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS