Hey! It's COLD outside!!
6Well dear readers, it’s February in North Dakota & It’s COLD outside!! Just FYI: It was much worse about 12 hours ago. Temps were a “modest” -15 but we had winds between 25-35 mph which made it feel like -40 to -50!! What’s the coldest temperature you’ve ever had to be exposed to? Today, though ridiculously cold is no where near as cold as I’ve experienced…that “honor” belongs to a time about 15 years ago. I was up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and it was BRUTALLY COLD. Fun Fact: Did you know the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales coincide at -40°? How do I know? The Jeep we were driving had a temp display & the display read the same number when we’d switch from F to C!!! So that’s mine. What’s yours?
- 8 comments, 31 replies
- Comment
You have reminded me why I don’t want to live in North Dakota
@CaptAmehrican And here I thought it would have been because there is no ocean or bay.
Ice sailing is fun by the way. Did that in Michigan.
@CaptAmehrican ND is not for the faint of heart for sure but you really should come up to visit…but perhaps when it’s a tad warmer. Thankfully, this weather doesn’t last for more than 7-10 days before we get a reprieve. Next week it’s supposed to be close to +40F & other than creating icy conditions (snow melt) it really is beautiful! Don’t forget that we get plenty of warm weather as well in Spring, Summer & Fall! 70’s & 80’s feel pretty good when one is used to the negative temps, & we can easily get into the 90’s & occasionally into the 100’s.
@CaptAmehrican @tohar1 Lake water is always more special when only the first 4 feet heats up and if you tread water your feet freeze in the thermocline
About six years ago we had snowmageddon here in St Louis, along with a polar vortex. If I recall, the entire midwest was involved. It got so cold in the northern states that trains stopped operating, commercial trucking companies could not operate their fleet, etc.
That said I want to say we did not get below -30 or so locally.
@tinamarie1974 I think that was the year a taxi driver told us about how he went out early one extremely cold morning and afterwards had to replace every single piece of plastic/rubber/silicone in his engine because everything froze and shattered. It had never occurred to me that this was possible.
@mossygreen On really, really cold mornings you have to heat up your engine block before you go anywhere.
@mossygreen no idea either. I knew about the diesel engine warm up @kidsandliz mentioned because the fuel gets thick in colder temps, but no idea all the plastic could crack!!!
@Kidsandliz @tinamarie1974 He was super-pissed off because it was expensive to fix and he had to find another cab to use meanwhile. And there was no real way to have been prepared for it because who knew? Canadians, I guess.
@mossygreen and those in northern MN… but certainly not most people.
@mossygreen @tinamarie1974 I don’t know if you received some bad info, but having lived in MN & ND all my life, I’ve never heard of anything even close to that. I have heard of people cracking a window if scraping ice off too vigorously. You must run antifreeze (not just water) in your engine’s coolant system or you could definitely run into some serious problems. Water expands when it freezes…so that could break anything from the radiator to the engine block to the lines running to the heater core. Perhaps that’s what the taxi guy was talking about.
NW Ontario something around -60 (F). The outdoor thermometer only went to -60 so we had no idea if it was only that cold or colder. The usual temps there were about -10 to -45 (F) with occasional forays below that and occasional ones, if we were lucky, to about 5 above.
Interesting side fact. You can tell, up to about -15 (F) how cold it is by how far up your nose your hairs freeze when you inhale.
@Kidsandliz YES! Nothing like the feeling of french-kissing an Ice Dragon to wake a person up in the morning!! Nose hairs, eye lashes, mustache, all crisp to the point where they feel like they’re going to just break off…It doesn’t get much better than that!
On a high school tent camping trip in the Allegheny National Forest, we woke up to a temperature of -27°F. We packed up and went back home.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@eonfifty
@tinamarie1974
It didn’t feel that cold, but maybe because there was no wind.
/giphy wind chill cold
@eonfifty hummm…kinda like when they say it was not that hot because it was a dry heat lol
But really, not that bad?
@tinamarie1974
Yes, exactly. Also, the sun was probably out, so that would have helped too.
/giphy it’s a warm cold
@eonfifty haha that actually does make a difference. For some reason I feel like a blanket of snow insulates things too
@eonfifty @tinamarie1974 Snow does insulate. That is how it can get above freezing inside of igloos too.
@eonfifty @Kidsandliz AH HA! So I am not crazy…well at least as it relates to this topic
@eonfifty @tinamarie1974 When we’d camp out in those nasty sub zero temperatures we’d sleep on the frozen lake, dig down in the snow to have a wall around us and put a tarp up over that. Was warmer than if we didn’t do that.
Used to live in International Falls and can well remember having stretches that were below zero F for a high for days on end. You would think that all that cold would lead to a dearth of mosquitoes but NO-o-o-o they were the size of birds in the spring and summer.
@chienfou seems like that is a cruel joke mother nature is playing.
@chienfou Just think how many and how large they’d be if there wasn’t that cold snap.
@chienfou And the black flies. Don’t forget about the black flies. And no see’ums.
@Kidsandliz …blood suckers… ALL of THEM!
@chienfou Michigan mosquitoes were big enough to fuck a turkey flat-footed. I kid you not.
@Mehrocco_Mole yep. They often said the mosquito was the state bird in MN.
Sorry, no cold weather story that’s even close. I’m sure others have. Probably @kidsandliz will be along with something soon.
@therealjrn that winter I spent in NW Ontario was an interesting experience. Glad I did it once, but don’t especially care to repeat that experience. Life is hard without running water, electricity, central heat, etc. in the bitter cold. Gives me more respect for how people managed to accomplish what they managed to back in “those days”.
SERE school in the mountains of Maine in November. There was ice on the rim of People’s Pond. (google it) I’ve been in colder weather (Nova Scotia and Northern Michigan) but never as miserable.
/image Prisoner Of War
@Mehrocco_Mole “People’s Pond. (google it)”
No. YOU Google it.
I can’t find fuck-all about it.
Unless, you got any more hints for me… county, city, exact location, etc.
@G1 @Mehrocco_Mole Here you go…
located by search for people’s pond Maine SERE
or here
(works best with people’s pond in quotation marks…)
@G1 @Mehrocco_Mole
Boolean search operators are your friend…
@chienfou @G1 @Mehrocco_Mole So can somebody explain the awful prisoner of war picture as it relates to people’s pond?
@G1 @Mehrocco_Mole @therealjrn read the articles linked in my post to get an idea of what SERE and those pics relate to…
@chienfou @G1 @Mehrocco_Mole Yeah, nevermind. It looks pretty fucking depressing.
Frozen eyelashes from the Siberian winter.
I do not currently seek a personal experience of this sort, not being rich, and not having time for lots of off-beaten-path travel.
But I’m impressed. That’s some winter there.