Today in Calgary it’s around -49C (-56F) with the wind chill, about -35 without. This obviously caused problems for a lot of people, and some schools shut down, but it certainly hasn’t brought the city to a halt.
It got me thinking, though, about what the coldest temperature I’ve ever been in was. This is close, but the winner is up in Northern BC during my Grade 12 exams. It was foggy and windless, and around -53C.
Anyone else suffered like I am right now?
Back in my college days back in the late '90s, we were skiing one Saturday at Crotched Mountan, NH and the temperature at the summit was -52F, it was great we were bundled up nice and warm and had the whole mountain basically to ourselves
back a couple years ago, when I was living in Vermont (Barre area), we had an entire month where it never got above -30F
Well that’s kinda weird… it was -35 in Calgary. T’was windy as heck too, being downtown. Don’t have any idea what the wind chill was but that long walk, fresh off the plane and still dressed for the southern US, was brutal.
I remember some -80ºF windchills here in WI. The actual temps were something around -40ºF with 40+MPH winds.
You just don’t go outside in that kinda weather.
Several years ago, we drove up to Boulder (from Texas) to see some snow. We got there, just as they were enjoying one of their mildest winters ever- no snow at all. I was pretty annoyed. After a few days of that, we drove up to Bear Lake a bit north of there… and boy did we find the snow. The lake was frozen over, solid, and the temperature was -18f.
I’m in Calgary. I think I already said that.
…or were you agreeing?
I have a friend that got back from Mexico last night. She was in flip flops still.
-30°F in Iowa in the middle of the night, lying in bed in sweats and thermal sox under 3 wool blankets and a bedspread, hearing the winds howling outside (chill factor -90°? -100°?) and the weatherstripping buzzing like angry hornets, hoping the power and the furnace didn’t go. (They didn’t.)
I attended Clarkson University for a year, up in the nerthern regions of New York State, near the St Lawrence river and the canadian border. The wind would sweep down from the north and across this one barren expanse of land that was conveniently located between the clump of dorm buildings and the clump of classroom buildings.
Not sure how cold the wind chill would get, but definitely below zero- I had a long parka and tall boots, but there was a gap at my knees- whenever I walked to class, with that wind blowing, that area of my knees was completely numb from the cold. I’d never realize I’d snotted all over my scarf because my nose had gone numb. Coldest I’ve ever been!
I was agreeing. Calgary beat my previous low by a good 28 degrees.
It’s been -40°C with the wind chill before back when I was in middle school. We had a few days off of school so none of us cared, but it must have been hell for anyone who had to be outside for longer than 5 minutes. This was in southwest New Brunswick, by the way, so it was a bit atypical. It usually doesn’t get much colder than -25, being right on the coast.
We had a nasty blast of cold back in the '90s sometime where it was -30 F. in the Twin Cities and -60 in Embarrass, Minnesota. The cold actually came through the walls of our house, and the walls and the roof kept letting out these loud, terrifying THWACK sounds. That was cold enough for this lifetime, thanks.
I wish.
The weather was saying stay in, especially if you take the buses. I can’t afford to stay home though, so here I am at work.
It’s supposed to be this cold here in Calgary for the next day or two at least, so tonight I’m making a pit stop on my way home to see about another pair of fleece pants… I’ve discovered my old pair is kinda big…
We’ve taken to pushing plastic bags into the space around our door when we’re in for the night because the weatherstripping on the door is gone around the top.
I swear that the one question that will bring out the most false information on the SDMB is weather extremes. The all time lowest temp ever recorded in New Hampshire is -47F at the top of Mount Washington. If the air temp at a ski resort really was -52F or anything even close to that, it would be shut down. Lift operators would be getting frostbite in minutes at those temps.
The second claim is just too silly to bother with.
A friend and I (both meteorology students) went out on Lake Mendota in Madison Wisconsin when the air temp was -30F and the wind chill was close to -60F just to see what it was like. I got frostbite on my neck. That kind of cold is obscene. You cannot keep yourself warm in those temperatures no matter what you are wearing.
I don’t know the temperatures, but mighty dang cold!
When I was in college, a bunch of buddies and I lived in a cabin on the edge of a lake in Maine. During the winter the wind would HOWL off the lake; if you went out to your car with wet hair, it would freeze pretty much instantly as you stepped outside. One day it was so cold my car door handle broke off in my hand… I spent the rest of the winter climbing in through the passenger side.
I have heard stories of the winters we lived through in MI, AK and CO when I was a baby and too young to remember. The coldest I remember, was thankfully only 2 days in MN. It was -30°C, but I remember someone remarking the wind chill was much worse. That was in 1991.
It reached 5 once in my hometown in Florida. Can’t remember if that was with windchill or not. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in negative temps.
I’ve been camping in -20F. That was a blast!
The coldest temp I’ve ever experienced was -40F (or celcius, take your pick - that’s where the scales cross). No clue what the wind chill was. At those temperatures you try not to be outside any longer than necessary anyway.
Winter of 1993 (or thereabouts), it was in the neighborhood of -35F with windchills close to -80F. I spun out on the ice on my way to work and had to walk nearly a mile. It wasn’t a fun day at all.
No one goes out skiing at -52F. It doesn’t happen.
I believe people get confused and report the “wind chill” temperatures. So you hear, “It’s 20 below, but with wind chill it’s 52 below”. But “wind chill” is an extremely imprecise measure. It’s true that wind makes cold a lot worse, but based on how you’re dressed and what cover you’ve got, the wind chill could be important or it could mean nothing.
It’s possible that with so-called wind chill factored in at the summit of the mountain it was 52 below. But you weren’t skiing at 52 below.
I grew up in Fairbanks Alaska. A ten minute walk at 60 below can result in loss of fingers and toes if you’re not dressed correctly. And that’s with absolutely still air. Funny thing, in extreme cold you’re much more at risk of frostbite than hypothermia, at temperatures like that your extremities will freeze before your core temperatures reach the danger zone.
Lemur, I remember a decade or so back when Fairbanks was hitting in the negative 50s and what an anomaly that was. Made the national news.
I used to spend summers just north of you at Umiat. O.J. Smith’s son (I forget his name) would tell us stories about how materials behaved in aberrant manner when temps got that low. Really strange stuff. He also said when it was that cold that usually everything got real still, no wind.