The coldest I have personally felt was around -27C in Bancroft, Ontario, without the wind chill.
The nightly low was -35C without the wind chill, and I was sleeping in an unfinished solar-heated room, though, which was basically just a walk-in solar collector at that point. Except that it was night. The temperature in the room got down to +6C. (The homeowner had an indoor recording thermometer, as she was checking out the conditions for the plants.)
I had a really big pile of blankets.
In the morning, my feet went straight into my Sorels* before the rest of me got far out of bed. I put on multi layers, finishing with parka and mitts. Outside, I discovered brilliant sunshine and the sparkle of snow as I went through the -27 morning to the outhouse. Never have I been so glad of a padded toilet seat. It warms up rapidly, you see.
(Did I mention the place was under construction?)
[sub]*Linked boot is similar to mine, but taller. Thay are not cheap. But utterly necessary.[/sub]
Down here in the balmy Twin Cities, we’re going to be in the teens below zero by tomorrow night with -30 windchills. But at least we don’t live in North Dakota anymore.
Of course I do, I studied it in college and earned a degree in it.
Are you over 52 years old? If you aren’t you’ve never experienced -60F temps. Your last sentence is a flat out lie. Continue digging your own grave if you wish.
I do remember one school closure. It was the day after an ice storm. I was living in Toronto, and an ice storm had dropped power lines all over the city. We all walked to school (no school buses in our neighbourhood), so for safety’s sake, school was cancelled.
So my schoolmates and I knew such a thing was possible. But we certainly never had a school closure due to snow or cold.
I’m 41. The day I’m talking about happened in '96 or '97. Whatever the actual ambient temp was, the -100 windchill is rare enough that I remember the day pretty distinctly. The other time I remember the windchills getting that low happened in the winter of '81-82.
I’m the only one who’s posted any cites. You’re talking a big talk but you’ve cited nothing.
Calling someone a liar outside the Pit is against board rules, by the way.
You keep saying that but I have no idea how to find it. If you know where it is, help me out. I don’t notice you posting any data or responding to the cites I’ve already posted.
MLK Day 2000. I still had the flu but the Americorps “celebrate” MLK day as a Day On, and was informed that if I wasn’t actually hospitalized, dead myself, or otherwise attending a funeral, I had to paticipate in the day’s service project, some 55 miles from home. The temperature for the day was -28 but there was a fierce wind, so for the second time in my life (the first being in early 1999) I got to experience a windchill in the -40s. I think it bottomed out at -47. Some people were disappointed it didn’t get to -50. Have you ever pumped gas in a wind like that? It rips through your clothes like you’re naked.
A few unfortunate folks spent all day outside, and I’m surprised none of them ended up in the hospital. As it was, we ended up totting things in and out of buildings all day, and I wished I was dead a few hours before we were allowed to go home.
Here’s a story on CNN about that week. It’s about a city I used to live in, a hundred plus miles south (which we note is always slightly warmer than here - my aunt who still lives there keeps us informed). It “only” got to -40 windchill there.
Oh, and Lamar? Here’s a cite from the national weather service that mentions -100 windchill in 1996 in Diogenes the Cynic’s area (since ND and MN are neighbors). I think you owe him an apology.
Bring me stats for these claims before you ask me for an apology. We have a department called the National Weather Service that keeps these statisics and gives them out for free. Make a simple phone call to Fargo or Grand Forks or even Minot and show me one single time where the temperature stayed below zero for “weeks on end”.
I can’t even guess at what the temperatures were in either place at those times, honestly. After enough years in Southern California, I completely abandoned my ability to accurately gauge temperatures under 50 deg F, all of which now register simply as “FUCKIN’ COLD, HOLY SHIT”. 25 may as well be -25 to me now, and vice versa.
ETA: It’s a little sad, since I clearly remember days in the negative double-digits in my native Prince George’s County.
On December 24, 2004 I got up early to take a train from Chicago to visit a friend in St. Louis. This was my third Midwestern winter, but I’m pretty sure that was the coldest day I have ever experienced in my life. I seem to recall it was -24 F, but I may be conflating that number with the date. It was definitely in the negative twenties, though, and it SUCKED.
The train station in Chicago is really close to the Sears Tower and I had to walk by on my way from the El. There was a sign cautioning people to watch for falling ice. I started running when I saw that. I’m not sure exactly what would happen to someone hit by an icicle falling from the Sears Tower and I didn’t want to find out.
When I was a kid, temperatures got down to 0F in the UK. But the coldest I’ve ever felt was -15C (+5F) at Everest Base Camp, with a windchill of Christ-knows what, as 120kph+ winds howled straight off the side of Everest down the glacier into the Rongbuk valley. The place we stayed had no heating. And the toilet had frozen up so we had to go outside. Imagine your bare ass in that environment in the middle of the night. JESUS that was cold.
-29 F in the East Lansing, MI area I think about 1979. The good news was my 1973 Gremlin started. The bad news is I had to sit in the driveway with the clutch pedal down for probably 10 minutes for the engine heat to warm up the transmission before I could shift it.
Cold weather fun: boil some water. Pour it in a coffee cup and go outside. Throw the water in the air and it immediately turns to fine snow.
I’m kinda afraid to post without cites, but I’m going to risk it ;). I spent the winter of '80-'81 in Ft. McMurray AB. I remember that is was regularly -45 without the windchill.
Right now I live in central Alberta, we are in the middle of a cold snap. The TV says it is -54 with the windchill.
As it has been said before, once it hit -20, it really doesn’t matter, it just damn cold!
