Browsed this article about the Russian research station at Lake Vostok in Antarctica.
Excerpt: “While temperatures on the Vostok Station on the surface above have registered the coldest ever recorded on Earth, reaching minus 89 degrees Celsius (minus 128 degrees Fahrenheit)…”
I can’t imagine, have no frame of reference whatsoever for that kind of temperature. The coldest I have experienced is probably -10F or so.
For that matter, I can’t even really comprehend the cold that Alaska experiences. Has anyone any experience with these extremely low temperatures? What is it like to feel something like that?
Coldest I’ve ever experienced was -40 at the USGS National Ice Core Lab in Denver. Only my face was exposed, and that hurt. It was not the global sense of dull deep cold you get after shivering in +40 degree temps; rather, it felt very localized and very sharp, and came on very quickly after we entered the storage freezer.
I would guess that if one was going to deliberately venture out into -128F temps, one would not leave any skin exposed.
So, is it somewhere in the -30F’s that cold air begins to hurt? Because I’ve been outside in -25F weather and it just seemed slightly colder than in the -10-0 range, not a whole different sensation (now granted, there was almost no wind.)
Coldest I’ve been out in was about -30F. This was actual outside air temperature, not in a freezer. All I remember was wanting to get stuff done and get back inside. Don’t remember much about the feelings I had. I do remember once, when I was a kid, there was what they called a ‘killer blizzard’ with wind chills (on the old chart) down to about -100F. I don’t remember what the air temperature was though. I do remember walking uptown in it though.
I was at a ski resort during an extreme weather event, and had to venture out to my car in an open lot every 2 hours to start it, as the temperature was hitting -44 fahrenheit, with wind chills down below -120. I didn’t expose ANY flesh.
It HURT HURT HURT. Air hurt. Even insulated skin under heavy clothes hurt. Mouth breathing was painful, nose breathing was out of the question. Even thru scarves.
I’d done -20 in the past, but that was without wind. That seemed balmy in retrospect.
I grew up in Fairbanks Alaska, where it would get down to 60 below a couple of times every winter.
At 60 below, everything sounds different. Lots of objects turn brittle, things like door handles sometimes just break. Snow is like sand.
At that temperature, there is absolutely no humidity in the air, it’s much drier than any desert. There’s thick icefog everywhere. And the air is absolutely still. Which makes sense. At that temperature you’re probably the coldest spot on Earth right then, if there was wind it would be bringing in air from somewhere else, and that air would be warmer.
If you’re wearing proper clothing it just feels colder than usual. But any exposed skin is painful, and breathing the air hurts unless you’re breathing through a scarf. You can’t have any exposed skin, or you’ll get frostbite very quickly. But note that if you’re properly dressed and active, hypothermia probably isn’t going to be a problem unless you’ve out for a long time. Because the air is so thin and dry still there’s not as much convection away from your body. The main danger is frostbite to the extremities, not your core temperature.
I believe that it is when the air temperature is into the -30s Celsius that health and city agencies begin recommending that people expose no skin when outdoors, because it’s around that ballpark of temperature when frostbite will begin to set in after 2-3 minutes.
When the air temperature is that cold (-30s F or lower), one of the most striking things is how much it hurts to breathe. The cilia inside your nose begin to freeze very quickly, and you can feel the cold inside your sinuses and lungs. It hurts. Your eyelashes will begin to freeze quickly as well if there is any wind. I imagine that in temperatures like Antarctica it would be even more extreme and more painful.
I have also been in -40 in a freezer and outside. Actually now that I think of it, I once did a minute+ in -80 C in a freezer with just a t-shirt and jeans. Freezers aren’t anything like the real world as the wind is what really does the “damage”! So I completely agree with Qadgop the Mercotan.
-40 with wind is a very sharp pain- not unbearable but quite noticeable. At that temp, obviously I was well insulated and only my cheeks hurt. I would compare it to touching the old metal ice cube trays when you took them out of the freezer- not burning, but definitely uncomfortable enough to have your whole body attempting to limit exposure.
I’ve been out skiing at -20C on a beautiful, still,clear day. As we were properly layered we were fairly comfortable. There was no wind at all and as long as you ski’d gently it was fine.
However…we went on a round-the-globe trip over Xmas and new year 2003/4. After Tokyo, New Zealand, Los Angeles we ended up in New York to visit some friends.
We managed to time it badly and ended up in the middle of the coldest spell for a hundred years.
I can’t recall exactly how cold it was (Fahrenheit confuses me when it gets into the negatives) but christ it was cold, painfully so. It must have been -20C as well and pretty windy too and of course we didn’t have all our cold-weather gear.
I recall walking towards Central Park one block at a time, then diving into the shops to get warm again. Perhaps some other big apple-ites can confirm if my memory is playing tricks on me.
I have heard that below about -60 F you can’t stay out too long no matter how warmly you dress, because you’ll get hypothermia just from breathing the air.
-40C = -40F. At this one point on the temperature scales, Celsius and Farenheit are the same.
The famous travel writer Paul Theroux messed up here in his very interesting book Riding the Iron Rooster about his travels in China via train. He was telling about a very cold night he spent in a Chinese guest house and mentioned that the temperature was -40 C. Then he made a comment to the effect that he didn’t even want to think about how cold that would be in Farenheit. Actually, as noted above, it would have been exactly the same.
coldest I’ve experienced was at my last job, walking into a temperature chamber at -60°C. First thing I noticed is that your nose hairs freeze instantly.
I grew up in Winnipeg where, pre-metrication and decades before climate change, mid-December to the end of February meant Fahrenheit temperatures regularly dropped from 20 below to 35 below and colder, and could stay there for weeks.
Schools didn’t close, warnings weren’t broadcast over radio and TV and I really did walk a mile-and-a-half to and from school four times a day in those temperatures (not wind-chill temps, which hadn’t been invented yet).
Nobody died. Nobody’s noses (or worse) fell off. Cars started even without block heaters plugged in if they were built by GM.
School yards had open-air skating rinks, with skate-changing/warm-up shacks, and feet would get cold, no matter how many pairs of socks were layered on. Sometimes they’d be numb-as-granite cold, and that was stupid, but no one’s toes fell off, as far as I know.
Later, going to work early mornings when it was 25 and 30 below and otherwise silent, I could hear an approaching bus when it was three or four miles away. The colder it was the louder it sounded.
In the extreme cold with no wind, car exhaust resembles comic-strip speech balloons growing from exhaust pipes, obliterating everything. Drivers, especially on main drags in morning rush hour and two to four cars abreast, could see nothing but white when the light turned green and lasting four to six seconds or more, or until moving through it, fingers crossed. I imagine it’s still like that in Yellowknife. Regina had a recent taste of it again, but it doesn’t last long anymore.
Now that I’m older and a Winnipeg winter means 15°F, I can pretend I miss it.
Which is -19 C, so the poster might have been pretty close. (I’m actually surprised that it’s never gotten below -2 F in NYC since the 1940s; it’s gotten below that multiple times in Philadelphia since then. Of course, Philadelphia’s inland.)
