The August power outtage got me worrying.
What if the power (and hence, our heat) went off.
How cold would it have to be outsdie for us in the house to get hypothermic?
I’m not sure, but I’d guess well below freezing for an extended period of time. At home you have a lot of available means to keep warm – extra clothes, blankets and sleeping bags. If you have a fireplace that could work too, though in a long-term outage existing stocks would sell out pretty quickly. In an emergency you could even just leave your (gas) stove on, though it would be an insanely bad idea to do this just for shits and grins.
- existing stocks of firewood. Makes a lot more sense that way.
we have no fireplace and our gas stove only works when its plugged in.
How well-insulated is your house?
Seriously, though, while it would be an ENORMOUS inconvenience, and there would likely be serious damage to your water systems from freezing, I bet you’d do OK, to most any temperature you’re likely to experience in Ohio, so long as you bundle up, keep windows and doors closed, and probably spend most of you time all in one small room. People put out a lot of heat, and stand up to cold pretty well, so long as they stay dry and out of the wind. (And have food and water; drinking water could eventually be a problem, if you have no artificial heat source.) The basement, if you have one, would also likely stay warmer than the rest of the house.
It’s happened before, in Ottawa and Montreal in January 1998. It gets a wee bit colder in those places than Ohio (I should know, I’m from Ottawa, but now live in Ohio). Much of Montreal (a city of 2 million) was without power for a week. Some outlying regions were out for 6 weeks! Emergency relief was slow in coming because highways were blocked by ice and downed power lines. It was a major inconvenience, but people survived. If you had no heat, there were emergency shelters. Food and water is another major problem, but it too can be taken care of with a little cooperation.
Well, reading OP they want to know how cold it must get outside b before they get hypothermia inside.
There are a few variables:
Are you naked?
Is the house insulated?
We lost power for three days due to an ice storm and it was in the 20’s outside. The house got pretty cold after 24 hours.
If you have NG water heater, you can still fill the tub and keep the bathroom warm without electrical power.
why do you wanna know?
Its a condo, theres one on either side of us also.
Last Feb here it got 29 or lower for 3 weeks!
We lost power after an ice storm last winter, and were without for…three days, I believe. It was in the teens and twenties, but it only got cold enough that we considered going to a hotel the day the power came back on. We don’t have a fireplace or anything else, just a gas stove…with electric strikers. We bundled up and put all the blankets on the bed, and the last day it was cold enough to want a blankie when you were sitting around, but we weren’t in danger of getting hypothermic.
OH … MY … GOD. Not 29 degrees! :eek:
Reminds me of the time we moved from Minneapolis to Cleveland. I called friends in Cleveland and they say “better bundle up, it’s been 5 degrees here all week”. That’s t-shirt weather - it was -35 degrees (actual temperature, not wind chill) in Minneapolis.
Ottawa and Montreal weather is similar to Minneapolis. Now think about being without electricity for a week, or six.
You can survive quite well. There were billions of people who lived before 1900, and none of them had even heard about electricity, central heating, natural gas, etc. Minneapolis, Montreal, and Moscow (to name just 3 cold places that start with M) all existed before electricity.
I lost power in the Great KC Ice Storm for about 11 hours. In that time, I carefully monitored the inside temperature.
My house must be very poorly insulated. Because the inside temp fell from 80F (I was anticipating a power loss, so I bumped the thermostat up in advance to pre-heat the house) to 50F over about 11 hours. The outside temperature was about 25-30F at the time. It was uncomfortable, but I was in no danger of dying due to plenty of blankets and lots of clothes, plus no inside wind. The basement was also warmer than the upstairs, as it was about 55-58F. Most likely, over an extended period, I might have done best there.
Now, unlike then, I have a few weeks worth of firewood cut and stacked. And 100% of it came from downed trees from the ice storm. 
But they all had fireplaces and supply of fuel (coal or wood). Nowadays not all buildings have fireplaces, and there may not be adequate infrastructure to supply an entire city with firewood.
This past winter, a cold snap hit India and nearby parts of Asia. In some areas it got down to 4 Celsius (around 40 F, I guess). People froze to death by the dozens. Well, they didn’t actually freeze so much as die of hypothermia.
Most Indian homes aren’t insulated anywhere near as well as homes in, say, Quebec. 4 degrees is plenty cold to die of it, if you can’t protect yourself.
Now, if you live in a poorly-insulated house, and have no heat at all, I can’t help but think it would get very cold inside if it was -30 C out. Especially if you open the doors a few times.
On the plus side, your meat won’t spoil.
Link to the India story:
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/8d001af2f49a556fc1256cad0050054b?OpenDocument
Link to a Government of Canada site:
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/publications/en/rh-pr/tech/03-106-e.html
From it:
That’s where co-operation comes in - you might not have a source of heat, but a friend or neighbor could. Also, there is more than just electricity, wood, and coal for heating. For example, a 20-pound BBQ propane tank with a simple burner can warm a small room to a reasonable temperature for quite a long time (I heated my entire house - 2800 sq ft - for two nights at 40 degrees temperature rise, on one tank).
Here’s a page with more details on the Montreal ice storm: http://members.aol.com/badice98/icestormDiary/icestormtext.html
According to the stats on this page, there were more than 4 million people affected, and 46 deaths. How many of those deaths were due to hypothermia (as opposed to traffic accidents, or slipping on ice and bonking your head, or having a heart attack and the ambulance can’t get to you, or …) is unknown, but it isn’t terribly significant given the huge number of people affected.
That’s where co-operation comes in - you might not have a source of heat, but a friend or neighbor could. Also, there is more than just electricity, wood, and coal for heating. For example, a 20-pound BBQ propane tank with a simple burner can warm a small room to a reasonable temperature for quite a long time (I heated my entire house - 2800 sq ft - for two nights at 40 degrees temperature rise, on one tank).
Here’s a page with more details on the Montreal ice storm: http://members.aol.com/badice98/icestormDiary/icestormtext.html
According to the stats on this page, there were more than 4 million people affected, and 46 deaths. How many of those deaths were due to hypothermia (as opposed to traffic accidents, or slipping on ice and bonking your head, or having a heart attack and the ambulance can’t get to you, or …) is unknown, but it isn’t terribly significant given the huge number of people affected.
Can’t you use a match to light a gas stove with an electrical striker?
Source: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/climate/wisnow.htm
We closed off the family room. We heated canned chicken soup in the fireplace; also used to keep us warm. Good thing we had a few seasoned cords behind the garage.
We emptied the fridge and placed all the contents upstairs on the tiled bathroom floor. It was cold enough up there nothing spoiled. All freezer goods went outside in the snow to keep; easy to do with below freezing temperatures (and near zero to below zero temperatures at night).
We turned on all the water faucets to a slow trickle to keep the pipes from freezing. They didn’t. We took no baths and no showers for a week. Any washing up came out of a three pound coffee can of water heated from the fireplace. Any other “personal duties” took place in the bathroom. Besides, flushing the toilet kept the water flowing there, too.
When I wasn’t home I delivered hot mashed potatos and chipped beef to stranded senior citizens from an unheated Red Cross panel van (the university was shut down). We had a much better deal at home than any of the places I travelled that week for the Red Cross.
The power came back on after almost a week.
Piece of cake. 
Source: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/climate/wisnow.htm
We closed off the family room. We heated canned chicken soup in the fireplace; also used to keep us warm. Good thing we had a few seasoned cords behind the garage.
We emptied the fridge and placed all the contents upstairs on the tiled bathroom floor. It was cold enough up there nothing spoiled. All freezer goods went outside in the snow to keep; easy to do with below freezing temperatures (and near zero to below zero temperatures at night).
We turned on all the water faucets to a slow trickle to keep the pipes from freezing. They didn’t. We took no baths and no showers for a week. Any washing up came out of a three pound coffee can of water heated from the fireplace. Any other “personal duties” took place in the bathroom. Besides, flushing the toilet kept the water flowing there, too.
When I wasn’t home I delivered hot mashed potatos and chipped beef to stranded senior citizens from an unheated Red Cross panel van (the university was shut down). We had a much better deal at home than any of the places I travelled that week for the Red Cross.
The power came back on after almost a week.
Piece of cake.
“Last Feb here it got 29 or lower for 3 weeks!”
In Ohio? Gets colder than that here & this is California.
If it’s 40 here & the ocean water is 53. I would in theory, stay warmer by being in the ocean surfing. Anyway, 25 minutes in 55 deg ocean water with your clothes on, is about the time you start to get hypothermic.