The official maximums for the city for most of the past couple of weeks might show temperatures just either side of 10 degrees, but locals will know those figures don't tell the real story.

The real story is the "feels-like" temperature - which, at midday on Tuesday, for example, was a bracing 0.8 (though it leapt five degrees in the next hour).

The real story has been those days of icy winds whistling through the Bathurst CBD, the hands thrust in pockets in George, William and Howick streets, the heads hidden under jacket hoods.

It's been the midday fogs and the protesting household water pipes and the early dusks as we approach the shortest day of the year.

For those able to see out these initial winter weeks at home or in a heated office, it is worth keeping in mind those whose workplace is the great outdoors.

Council's parks and gardens staff ride the highs and lows of the Bathurst climate in a way that the denizens of many CBD businesses will never fully appreciate, as do Bathurst's tradies.

Work has gone on at the COVID testing site in the RSL car park amid the arctic conditions, as well as out at the Great Western Highway upgrade at Raglan.

And there was no postponement allowed for those pruning the deodars in Kings Parade recently.

A consulting arborist had told council that these giants needed a careful trim and workers in their warmest clothes did the job over a number of days, excising branches to reduce the risk of them dropping on someone below and to increase the trees' life expectancy.

The "feels-like" temperature must be something else entirely if you're high in the canopy of one of the towering deodars, the city spread below, or you're laying bricks on a building site in the Bathurst suburbs or doing farmwork on the city's rural fringe.

The "feels-like" temperature would be a matter of practical consideration, rather than idle curiosity, if you're in a job that requires you to get up well before dawn or toil away into the (ever more freezing) night.

To those who work outside through Bathurst's winter, we take our hat off to you.

And then we put it straight back on again because it's too cold to be without it.